Walk tall and look the world right in the eye

IF YOU read this column last week, you’ll know we have a summer of walking ahead! I’m going to focus on an activity pretty much everyone can do, or at least used to. This week is about how to walk.

When I’m at work, I get up and call my patients in from the waiting room in the old-fashioned way; with my voice and a smile. Watching them get off a chair and walk across the waiting room into my room (it’s not far!) gives me a great deal of information.

The way we walk is unique to us. We recognise people by their walk and gait, but this can change over time.

Our walking style might be impacted by pain, muscle strength and co-ordination, tiredness, dementia and even distress. You can tell when someone is sad and dejected by the way they hold themselves as they walk.

And our lifestyle means we crunch ourselves up over laptops and desks, slump into sofas for hours in front of the TV, and possibly squish our feet into shoes that do them no favours, whether high heels or sloppy flip flops.

So the 159 bones, muscles and joints of our feet hardly get used some days. And it matters, because walking should be a natural upright activity and we’ve basically become curled up. Our back, abdominal and pelvic muscles are too tight or too slack where they shouldn’t be.

When we walk, we should aim to roll through the spring of our soles, all the way from our heels to our nicely splayed toes. Not, as I so often see, should we just hit the ground with a heavy plod.

So we may need to relearn how to walk, to enjoy being on our feet without our backs hurting (which is just because it isn’t used to being, well, used!).

Start slow if I’m describing you. Push off from your back foot using the muscles at the backs of the legs. Roll through each foot from the heel to ALL your toes! Lift your chest and roll your shoulders back.

Straighten your neck to look ahead, not at the floor. Imagine you are being lifted by a piece of string attached to the top of your head. Swing your arms freely and unclench those hands.

Smile, and breathe a more deeply. Keep going!

The 159 bones, muscles and joints of our feet hardly get used

some days.