Walk this way
The average reader of this blog takes 10,000 steps a day. If you're going to do something over 10,000 times do it well.
The way you walk says a lot. The trained eye can pick out dozens of things about you just by watching you take a few steps. It tells:
What's happening in parts of your brain
How your balance is
what injures you’re predisposed to
Which exercises may help you move better
How effective said exercises were
Do you want to walk/move better? Well relax, take off your shoes, and walk quickly to the end of the room and back. Your walk tells a story.
Make it stand out
Gait assessment means assessing the Sacroiliac (SI) joint. The SI joint is the dimples right above your butt. So if you want to learn about gait you gotta start by staring at people's butts.
Make it stand out
As you walk ground force is decelerated from your landing foot and up the leg before crossing the body to the opposing arm. The SI joint is where force transfer crosses your bod. SI motion tells us a lot.
4 things can happen at the SI joint, so we'll put your butt into 4 categories. They are:
Make it stand out
Category 1: No movement at the SI. Lumbar and thoracic vertebrae over rotate in compensation.
How common is this: very.
What's it tell us? You’re too tight through your low back area. 10,000 steps like this is gonna hurt a little bit. Stand up and walk around the room like this. Now imagine walk ing like this all day every day.
Yikes.
Make it stand out
Category 2: identified by the hips moving up and down 1 to 2 inches. Think Jessica Rabbit walking. Slightly better than cat 1.
How common is this: very. This is also the easiest one to spot.
What's it tell us: your SI joint is moving too much (compensating). Over 10,000 steps this can create a shearing effect on the joint which could lead to arthritis. Walk around the room like this and you’ll feel it.
Me- post 1 hour of yoga. My Left hip is a cat 3, my right is very nearly a cat 4. Yoga and deliberate stretching/mobilization will improve your SI function.
Category 3: Rotational movement. Now we’re moving a little better. You’ll see diagonal creases in clothing sitting above a cat 3 SI joint.
How common is this: Not rare, but not common either.
What's it tell us: We’re starting to move pretty well here. My left leg/hip below can be called a 3 (note rotational sway).
Category 4:
How common is this: Rare.
What's it tell us: This is what your SI is looking like If you’re moving efficiently. Anterior Posterior glute rotation. Vertical crease in clothing. My right side (above) is almost a 4.
The guy who taught me this categorization tells a story about someone walking through Athlete’s village in the Olympics remarking ‘everyone here is a 4’. This is what we aspire to.
Now what?
Now that we know our category what can we do with this information?
The goal is to move efficiently. Lousy walking/force transmission mechanics can add up to significant pain over the thousands and thousands of reps. If you stretch, mobilize and strengthen you need a yardstick to measure whether not what youre doing is helping, or hurting. Your walk will improve if your workout/drill helps, or worsen if it does not.
My video above was taken after an hour of yoga which definitely improved my gait. Had I run 10 miles you'd be looking at a pair of cat 2 hips.
It's a little tedious asking clients to walk back and forth following drill after drill; but eventually you find the right stretch or drill and their walk improves. They waddled in but now they are gliding. You now know a simple exercise they can do to immediately feel better in their body. Their posture improves, theirface lights up a little and out of habit you ask, ‘now how's that feel?’
But you already know the answer. Hips don't lie.