Walking is one of our most functional, primitive movements. This is why it’s a significant milestone in children’s development, not only because it displays a good level of leg strength, balance, and coordination but also because it opens toddlers up to further learning due to their new mobility. In essence, walking is extremely useful and practical. When we lose confidence in our walking, either through pain, injury, or aging, it can affect multiple facets of our daily lives, thereby impacting our mental and physical well-being. Understanding what makes up good walking biomechanics and putting these into practice can help maintain better health and improve recovery from injuries and illnesses.

How Does Our Walking Become Inefficient?

Everyone has a unique way of walking and moving in general. Our walking is molded from a young age by many different factors, including our hobbies, how our parents and siblings walk, and how we grew as children, to name a few examples. However, the main disturbances to an efficient and symmetrical gait are often caused by habits, injuries, or aging.

First off, our day-to-day habits heavily influence our unique ways of moving. Lifestyle factors such as our job, hobbies, and family life change the way we move due to the repetition of similar movements. When it comes to walking, nowadays, we are often multitasking. We are using a mobile phone, walking a dog, carrying shopping bags, and often holding items with the same hand. All of these habits affect our movement and our gait, and over time can lead to ingrained inefficiencies.

Tying into our habits, another common impact on our walking is our sitting habits. A large proportion of the population has jobs that require sitting for the majority of the day. Chairs have also been designed to be more and more comfortable, meaning that we engage fewer muscles and can sit for longer without discomfort. As a result, our hips become tighter and less mobile, and our glutes and other core muscles become weaker and less utilised. This combination can hugely impact how we propel ourselves forward.

Pain, from either injury or illness, is also a huge modifier of our movement. When we have an injury and experience pain, our brain and the rest of our nervous system do what they can to protect the body, leading to compensations. When we have pain and compensate for more than 72 hours, our body starts to ingrain this as our new way of moving. This is especially true post-surgery, as the level of trauma is greater. If you don’t reprogram the brain when the pain has gone, you might still carry compensations years after the injury. Compensations might be asymmetrical stride length or arm swing, a shoulder dropped on one side, or locking at the knee.

Our gait also changes as we get older for a few different reasons. Firstly, our body composition changes, meaning we lose muscle mass at a faster rate and therefore become weaker. Generally speaking, most of us don’t complete enough resistance training, particularly as we get older, to slow down this process. We also lose speed as we age because the nervous system ages and slows down, making it harder to walk efficiently. Our balance also becomes compromised, and we become more unsteady on our feet due to the slowing and aging of our nervous system. This can lead to compensations such as walking flatter-footed, looking at the floor, and lack of arm swing.

Walking for Rehabilitation

For healthy individuals who aren’t experiencing pain and can move around with ease, it’s not necessary to make changes to your gait. However, for those who have had a period of inactivity, experienced pain or injury, or have lost muscle and balance from aging, walking inefficiencies are more important to correct. Walking with an efficient, symmetrical gait is an excellent tool for rehabilitation. It’s a low-impact and full-body movement when done correctly. It doesn’t require any equipment, making it free and accessible to everyone. It is also a great way to rewire the brain to reduce compensatory movements, particularly post-surgery, due to its repetitive nature.