Walking: What Does This Do For Us?

Ah, the benefits of walking. Let’s talk about the great outdoors… fresh air, endorphins, easily accessible and free exercise. You can do it anywhere, with minimal gear and experience, build it gradually and safely, and see more of the world as you are doing it. All really amazing.

And then the obvious health benefits.

Much has been written about it that you probably already know - let’s briefly recap:

• Walking helps with weight management

• It improves lung capacity through better, freer breathing

• It lowers blood pressure and improves circulation, and reduces the risk of heart disease

• We promote joint health as we load joints which gives us better flow of synovial fluid that lubricates them

• There are benefits with metabolic health through increases in insulin sensitivity

• Regular walking lowers cortisol levels and helps lower anxiety - getting those endorphins flowing

• It promotes better immune system support as immune-protective cells circulate better

And there is more!

From my viewpoint as a movement professional, walking is really amazing as it activates all the movement chains in the body.

As we walk, we go through a heel-strike (where the heel, literally, contacts the ground), through a single leg stance, to a push-off (where we push off with the big toe). This sets in motion all the muscle groups and sets in a specific, very coordinated way.

Left, right... left, right....

Through this cycle, we go through cross-body connections that activate - shorten - and lengthen, muscles across the whole body. Literally, from the foot, all the way up the leg, to the pelvis, back and ribs, to the shoulders and neck, and actually, even over the crown of the head…

… involving the whole body, front, back, sides.

And rotation - please don’t forget rotation.

The pelvis rotates as we walk - heel strike right foot, right side of the pelvis goes posteriorly tilted, the pelvis as a whole rotates left, the ribs should counter-rotate right (helped in part by the arm swing), and the head rotates right (relative to the pelvis) so that you can stay looking straight ahead.

Single leg stance. We need to stay stable and not fall over.

Heel strike with the left foot, then push off with the right big toe, right side of the pelvis goes into an anterior tilt, rotation reverses. You hopefully get the jist.

All this counter-rotation does not just end with regular, predictable cross-body muscle activations… it also acts as a gyroscope, stabilising the gaze as you walk (you normally want to be looking straight ahead, unless you want to divert the gaze somewhere, correct?). This is called the vestibulo-ocular reflex and it is really important for our brain to know where we are in space and where we are headed, helping us get where we want without falling over.

That's probably enough of that - there is a lot going on - but can you see that it is really quite complex?!

This, even at a very basic level, is something many people are not very aware of, until we discuss and demonstrate that in class. I always assess people’s rotation and single leg standing during their sessions as we start discovering the preferences we show.

Which can be significant, and only partially explained by whether someone is right- or left-legged, or right- or left-handed (which should correlate).

Something very often gets in the way. We discover we are more stable on one side, and tilt, or sway, or feel unbalanced on the other side.

So, enter more walking … more and more of the same exposure, outside of the safety of a studio, gym or level ground, where we can already feel some differences.

Here is where walking, generally amazing overall and great for us, can create some issues.

• When we already walk with compensations - avoiding loading an ankle, knee or hip, where we have existing restrictions with rotation and counter-rotation, or even issues with our vision - these patterns are reinforced, and not resolved. Such structural imbalance redirects unnatural stress onto other areas. They can cause secondary muscle spasms or exacerbate alignment issues.

• Overuse of certain areas - certain musculo-skeletal issues, such as Achilles tendinopathy, can worsen with the sustained walking, creating more chronic problems.

• We have more joint stress - whilst normally, walking is not overloading joints, being low to medium impact, if we already have severely painful knee or hip osteoarthritis, cartilage can be irritated

• The load from just walking is not, on its own, enough for building muscle strength, especially if existing joint instability exists. As mentioned above, we will just keep compensating with further walking, and avoid loading the area.

• Walking on its own is not enough to strongly load boned to prevent bone density loss. Walking is more of a passive activity. It does not pull on bones heavily enough to strengthen them.

Hopefully, my readers can see that walking it great for most of us - alongside a sensible and targeted regimen of other activities.

I advocate a combination of rehabilitative activities to realign the body, core strengthening workouts to promote working from the deep centre outwards, and weight-bearing activity to strengthen bones, alongside amazing, fun, relaxing, stimulating, enjoyable and explorative walking to get into nature and make the most of the great outdoors.

I do 1-1 consultations and run small group Pilates sessions where we work to realign the body and unwind existing patterns. To book, please inquire via my website or on Messenger via FB (@MovebeyondUK) and we can have a free no-obligation chat to see how I can help you meet your health and fitness goals.

To your health

Kaye