Walking: Your Most Complex Exercise Part 1

Walking is truly a complex and full body exercise. It can strengthen your hips, tone your bum, flatten your belly and more. It involves balance, agility, core flexibility. Walking can be a healing exercise for your musculoskeletal system and joints, or it can create low back, hip and knee injuries that you may never associate with the way you walk.

One of my most memorable walking experiences was after a continuing education class led by an international physical therapist teaching in the US for the first time. Attendees were offered the chance to have our gait calibrated by a patented, computerized track. Admittedly I was a bit nervous with performance anxiety as much as I was curious. I brag that my scores showed “near perfect gait” which surprised our expert. I’m eager to share my walking prowess with you!

Because of its complexity, there is a lot to gait so I’ll break it down into a few different articles so we can explore, make step-by-step changes (pun intended) and get you reaping the benefits immediately.

HOW STRENGTHEN and TONE YOUR BUM while you walk.

TIP #1

Walking is mostly a one legged balance pose. Those of you who take yoga know the challenge that comes with balance poses, yet we’re all balancing between every step!

Here’s how to check if you are using balance to strengthen and tone your hips and bum:

Stand in front of a mirror with both feet flat on the floor.
Keep your left foot on the floor and bend your right knee by rolling onto the ball of the right foot.
If at any point your left hip jets out a little or moves towards the left you know that you are not balancing optimally.
Optimal balance requires the use of a very important muscle Gluteus Medius. You’ll feel this by hugging your hip toward the midline.
If you’ve rolled onto the ball of your right foot and your hips haven’t moved, then so far so good and continue to roll the right foot on to the tippy toes holding it there. See if you’re able to still keep your left hip exactly where it was when you started.
Lastly pick up your right foot hovering it over the ground (or as high as your right knee to your belly button) and hold there.
If you can hold for 90 seconds without your left hip jutting out, you are getting an A+ on one legged standing, hip strength and balancing. More importantly, your gait is already checking out as an optimal exercise!

TIP #2

Walking can also directly tone and firm your bum, but you’ve gotta use the right muscles to get the benefits. This is such an overlooked part of gait with such a gratifying solution; I hope you’ll implement this right away. AND it’s one of the most effective ways I know of to prevent low back pain.

I wrote out these steps in a previous article which can be found here.

Here’s to optimizing your swagger,

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