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How well do you walk?

Walking, a movement that we only think about three times in our whole life.

1. When we learn to walk around the age of 9-15 months, it takes great effort and training to balance out heavy heads and body on those tiny little feet.

2. Somewhere in the middle of our lives when we “ acquire” an injury and some professional has to remind us what an important part our walking gait plays in our overall health

3. And lastly, when we are old and walking has almost become the most unnatural movement in the world.



We take the act of walking for granted every day. Most of us never consider how we walk or even what is truly involved in the “supposedly “natural movement of walking.

And thinking that our spine and back might be involved is out of this world.



WALKING: Move at a regular pace by lifting and setting down each foot in turn, never having both feet off the ground at once (Oxford dictionary) , sounds simple enough but let’s take a closer look at what is involved in the action of walking.



Even before we take our first step has a process been set in place to kick start our body in to motion.

Our spine acts like the drive shaft of our bodies and the fascia in our back the spring component that activates this shaft and in turn gets our legs moving.

When we initiate our first step one arm, in this case our left should start swinging forward and simultaneously our right leg will start moving forward, this motion will set in place a stretch in the muscle and fascia line between the left latissimus dorsi muscle, connective fascia, spinal muscles, the gluteal muscles and the iliotibial band.

After this muscular/fascia line has been thoroughly stretched, it returns in a spring like manner that drives us forward.

A similar action happens in the front where the external oblique connects to the opposite internal oblique and continues down the adductors.

With these, spring like connections that drives us forward is it easy to see how intricate walking is and how much is of our upper body is involved.

Think now for a moment how hard our lower body has to work and how much unnecessary pressure we put on our lower back if we do not walk from our spinal drive shaft that is driven by our spring action of the Oblique/Adductor connection on the front and Latissimus/Gluteal/ ITB connection on the back