Move First. Walk Second
October 3, 2016
You can’t walk until you learn to how to move first.
Walking is just one form of movement. Walking on two feet is not easy. It’s the most complicated movement pattern on the Planet Earth. We are the only species that can do it. We take it for granted as being so simple.
‘Come on Doc it’s just walking, how tough can it be?’
Well, there’s a reason you didn’t just pop out of your mom and start running. You had to earn the right to walk. It takes months of rolling, crawling, falling, creeping, kicking, etc. Mother Nature is pretty smart. She does things for a reason. Making you spend time on the floor failing at and learning fundamental patterns before you stand up and do stupid shit to mess everything up is her strategy.
So when things go wrong on two feet, and they will, take time to revisit where it all began. Flip the neural switch and watch your brain give you back lots of good things. There are two primary reasons we can stand on two feet and move.
- One muscle
- One bone
The gluteus medius muscle gives you the ability to stand on one leg. Takeaway that muscle and you come crashing down. I find most (make that 99.9%) of people with musculoskeletal pain have a poorly functioning glute medius. This makes them vulnerable to force impact and compensations take over. Show this muscle some love (release it and exercise it) and things everywhere can start to feel better.
The ilium of your pelvis has a more sideways orientation than a posterior one allowing the muscles of the hip to stabilize you with every step. Apes have a more posterior orientation so they must walk side to side in the frontal plane. Humans can or should walk in the transverse plane. Walking is a spiraling motion. Watch a girl with a ponytail walk. The ponytail moves in a circular figure eight spiraling motion.
If the muscle is weak or the bone is malpositioned your body has an efficiency problem. Less efficiency means more effort to accomplish the given tasks of life. Eventually stuff breaks.
Don’t take the miracle of walking for granted.
We were born to walk.
We were designed to move.
One must come before the other.
To improve walking you don’t walk more, you improve how you move with the fundamentals you started with on the ground. Better movers become better humans. When you move good you feel good. When you feel good you make others feel good. That’s how you change the world. So everytime you change how you move you change the world. Ripple effect in action.
How can you begin? Go back to rolling, crawling, creeping, falling, kicking, etc. Have fun on the floor!
You have a brain for the purpose of moving and taking action. Otherwise you would be a sea slug. Don’t be a slug. Get moving.
STAY STRONG
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