Lessons

Lesson Info

Walking

All right, (soothing music) for the final (bird chirping) and perhaps most important section, we're gonna get into the value of just getting out and going for a walk. So as we're going out for a walk, we'll break down a few specific exercises to tap into, the toe hinge and what that is, the ankle joint, and the value of having full range of motion of that. Opening up through the hips, having a connection through the spine into the opposite shoulder, and just having this clean almost effortless gate pattern. First thing to think about is foot health. And so something to tinker with is making sure that you're not compressing your feet up into some shoes that disallow their full range of motion. So something to think about, just a little like exercise to play with, if you were to contract your wrist muscle, so do this at home now, just explore, put your hand on your forearm and notice if you move the index finger, move the middle finger, move the ring finger, the pinky, kind of go like th...

at, open the hand wide, contract it, you can feel all of this amazing architecture of connective tissue pulling and twisting and turning, contracting and expanding, all the way up through your forearm. That's a beautiful thing. That exact same thing is happening throughout your foot and your ankle and your shin complex. So as you're going through your walking range of motion, in an ideal world, we would've never have lost that full functional range of motion of our toes and of our feet, 'cause they have never been bound in, you could call them foot coffins, my friend Katie Bowman has described them as that, where they get bound up, stuck in one range of motion, just like if you were to say bound three of your fingers, and you duct-taped three of your fingers. Suddenly you lose that range of motion. It atrophies. It goes away. It's very hard to get it back. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna get into getting those ranges of motion back and then starting to re-implement some new found walking into your day. So something I'd recommend is getting a shoe, there's lots of different brands that offer this, I know that the beautiful model Anna would disagree with these shoes, 'cause they're not so attractive in her perspective, Yup. but they are functional in quotations. So what's valuable about a functional in quotations shoe, the things we're looking for. One, you want to be able to roll it up. So if your shoe has too much support, sometimes there's value in support, maybe you're out walking through some mountains or something in this sort, you don't want to roll your ankle. For the most part, daily life walking, you don't want to have too much support 'cause if you have too much support, then you're gonna be atrophying your body's natural support systems. Next thing is making sure the toe box is wide enough that you are not compressing those toes. So ideally when you're wearing your shoes, you would actually be able to spread your toes open and go through little like exercises if you were so compelled to do so. Next thing to tinker with is making sure that you, your shoes do not have a high heel. If you have a high heel, it's fine in short bounce, it's fine if you're an Olympic weightlifter, it's fine if you're going out to dinner, and you're wearing heels for an hour, and it's like for a specific thing, but in general, if you just reprogram your ankle to being up on a heel all the time, it's wildly inappropriate for the function of your body. So making sure that your general shoes that you'd be wearing just in daily life are following the simple things, that you have mobility through all of the ranges of motion, you have spaciousness in the toe box, and you're not up on a heel all day long. So now we're gonna get into some specific exercises on how to walk more effectively with beautiful model Anna. Anna! I'm here. (man laughs) Anna's barefoot, very exciting. So barefoot's great, because we get to actually feel the contours and textures of the ground. We have 7,000 nerve endings, around 7,000 nerve endings in each foot, so that's sending an immense amount of information to the rest of our body and the connective tissue, the nerves around the lower back, they're actually shared with some of the nerves in the feet. So the bottoms of your feet are sending information up to the orientation or where the the ideal orientation of your spine. So if you start to numb out your feet, it could potentially lead to back and spine issues. So first thing, it's great practice just to get in the habit of, you could step on maybe some, maybe get yourself like a textured rock or something. You could balance up on that. You could get some of those like myofascial release balls and do some like foot massage stuff, things of the sort. So starting off with this magical walking experience. First thing, we're gonna start to play with a little spin on a lunging exercise to start to bring a little bit more engagement into that posterior chain into the booty. So beautiful model Anna, we're gonna start off, we're gonna bring left foot forward, ba bango, and you're going to drive that back foot back, ba, ba, ba, ba da, and you're going to bring the weight forward into the front of the toes. Good. Keep the big toe connected down on the ground. Good. And then you're gonna start to pour a little bit of weight into this area of the foot while keeping the toe connected down into the ground. So most of the weight probably, about 65%, 70% of the weight is driving through this outside area here. Oftentimes when people are walking, they have a tendency of collapsing that foot inward. We're gonna start to correct that a little bit and really bring some energy, whoo, back into the booty, back in this posterior chain. Next thing we're gonna play with is Anna's gonna actually start to bring her hips and her torso forward. Keep the ribs tucked down towards the hips. Good, and drive the weight backward a bit. So really putting a lot of weight back into this back hip. Ba bang, this is gorgeous. So from this position, Anna's starting to put some stress and some weight into this side of the booty. So getting into glute medias, glute minimus, glute maximus, and starting to really open up even space around the adductors and working on this orientation of the foot, knee, and hip to be able to actually engage these posterior chain muscles, so you're really powerful as you're walking or running. So from this position, hang out here for a few seconds, take a few breaths, and now Anna is going to actively switch positions, and as she's doing that, she could stack all of her weight on this foot and try to pull yourself back into standing, ba boom, and then alternate sides, same thing on the other side, boom. Driving back. This knee goes out wide. Most of the weight's going in the front foot driving that weight backwards, so it's really driving into the hip, rotating this back leg inward like that, retrain that whole body, ba bam, hang out in that position. Hold that for a few seconds, few breaths. (man breathes out) And then actively bring your weight onto that front foot and slowly drive yourself back. Boom, into standing. Beautiful way to activate that posterior chain, really get your body ready to ready to run, ready to walk, ready to feel engaged. Next thing we're gonna tinker with is we're gonna start to de-stress the body. So this is something that I learned from some runners from, particularly from Kenya is where I gathered this. And I wasn't in Kenya. I gathered this from an elite level runner that learned this from people actually in Kenya, and the practice they would do upon warmup for running, they would go through, we're gonna wiggle together Anna, so you can go through, and so while you're running, this is how we kind of think we need to run, we're refocused, right? The starting off point of running is really thinking of how do we relax the body. So ideally as we're moving, it can be a practice of where can we relax more. So going through, letting the shoulders kind of wiggle out, let the wrists wiggle out, let the hips wiggle out, and just kind of every step you're taking, every breath you're making, unintentional rhyme, I apologize, is an opportunity to actually de-stress the body. So again, kind of like we were talking about before of like you're being breathed in a way, it feels almost like breathing is effortless. We can get to that point where we're being walked, we're being run. If you've ever experienced like a runner's high before, that's often the thing that will happen with people. It's almost as like the body is moving without us doing any work. So now we are gonna actually come into walking. So the way to look is we want to pay attention, as you're walking at home, you know, pay attention to that relationship of as the left or right hip in this case goes back, I'm creating this tension across my midsection up into my left shoulder, I'm elastically loading this spiral pattern, and then with great efficiency, my body naturally, bah, pulls me back into this opposite side. So as we're falling all the same principles that we learned previously, elongation up through the head and the spine, ribs subtly relaxed down towards the hips, so you're not flaring the ribs out forward, following those same concepts of finding that balance with the foot, not allowing the foot to drop in a ton as you're walking, but just feeling that stack and really the, like that one foot balance on each foot, and then taking that into movement and really making every moment be an opportunity to kind of investigate how can we walk smoother, better, more efficiently. So we're gonna take a walk. We're gonna follow those movement patterns. We're just gonna go nice and slow and just follow this contra-lateral movement. So you might have to go a little bit faster to get it to actually be normal. If it's too slow, it gets too weird, and you can actually tap into elasticity, so let's go a little bit faster now. And so I'll keep, and you can stay on your little area here, walk on the rocks like a weirdo. And so just allowing the arms to swing, boom, boom. So every step you're taking Anna, we're allowing the arms to swing. So relax the torso, relax the shoulders. Just let the arms like whoa, like swing out. Ugh, let them just hang, relax, boom, boom. Yeah, like pendulum, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And as we're walking, something to tinker with, we'll turn around, but something to tinker with, actually face this way just for a second. Something to tinker with is as we're taking each step, our spine is gonna be stacking over the standing foot. So as she's stepping over that right foot, her spine, boop, balances over that right foot. As she's stepping over the left foot, boop, the spine subtly transfers over to the left foot. And then we'll, let's come backwards a little bit, come back with me. Boom, boom, boom. Now we're gonna actually investigate walking backwards just for fun. So there's an old Chinese, I don't know, proverb we could say maybe, that a hundred steps, a hundred steps backward a day is worth a thousand steps forward. I gather that from my buddy Ben Patrick. There's the knees over toes guy program. He's a sweetie. You tune into the podcast or the YouTube video that I did with Ben Patrick to learn more about that. So as we're going, walking backwards, what's valuable about this is we're putting a little extra energy into the knees. We're putting a little extra energy into spreading those toes, into putting a bit more challenge into that dorsi flexion of the ankle, dorsi flexion being this range of motion. And it's just a nice way to start to turn onto the posterior chain, turn on the glutes, and just kind of like reconfigure the way that we walk. Starting to pay deeper, closer attention to like the meaning and value of walking well. And that is enough for the mechanics of walking. So a few key takeaways. It's very hot. I'm very sweaty. Feels very nice. I like it. Every step we're taking, we're driving that weight. As the weight's on the right foot, my spine, my head, boof, drops over to that right side. As I'm stepping onto the left, my spine, boof, stacks over to the next side. As I'm taking a step, my left foot comes back. I'm extending open through the right shoulder, open through the hand, and then bah, bah, bah, bah, and really feeling that connection as I'm stepping with my foot. It's kind of starting off coming on this lateral or outside of the foot. It's kind of rolling through, so the knees wide, rolling the outside, and then as I roll through, I'm coming across the toes, boom, onto the big toe, and boom, so there's a subtle rotation in, boom, and then I'm back loaded up for the next, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then you take that into normal walking and just let go of all of the ideas and concepts of what it means to walk well and just go walk and have fun and make it be a part of your life. So suggestions are do more walking meetings if you're interested in such things. Just anytime you have a call, if you have a 30 minute call, it's a beautiful opportunity to go get some sunshine, take your sunglasses off. If you have appropriate place to do it, be barefoot. Explore, be excited about different textures and contours for your feet to investigate, to start to engage those 7,000 nerve endings. It's gonna stabilize your lower back, it's gonna make you a more intelligent physical body, and it just feels good. So that is it, that is all. Suggestion is implement more walking meetings. Just find reasons, find excuses to go outside and take a walk. There's so many more excuses (upbeat music) throughout our day than what typically we allow ourselves for, and so just finding excuses to go take a walk with regularity outside would be great if you can do that. And enjoy it. Don't think about it too much.