arches

Are you beginning to wonder if you will need to set up your bed in the living room? Do you think twice about visiting places with stairs? Do you have a friend or older relative facing this kind of challenge? 

Welcome to our second post on navigating steps and stairs. Our first post looked at how to power yourself up stairs—this one talks about how to come down stairs. This kind of “life exercise,” done skillfully, can be transformative and gives many benefits beyond getting you to where you want to go.

Going down stairs is a functional exercise that doesn’t need a gym. Freepik

Walking downstairs gets you fitter than walking upstairs! 

Dr Michael Mosley, a well-known BBC health journalist, has a favorite study that had people walk either up or down the stairs of a 10-story building twice a week, using the elevator in the other direction. Both groups saw improvements in many health outcomes—but those walking down the stairs—perhaps surprisingly—did better. They were fitter, had a lower resting heart rate despite doing less cardiovascular exercise, lower insulin sensitivity, lower blood fat levels, better bone density, superior balance, and twice the improvement in muscle strength. You can read more about the benefits of eccentric rather than concentric muscle action here.

Safety first

Whatever your fitness and mobility level, follow these measures to use steps and stairs safely:

• Use a handrail if appropriate
• Watch out for slippery or unsound surfaces and trip hazards 
• Wear well-fitting, non-slip shoes

Start with your stance

When descending stairs, it’s especially important to maintain a well-balanced stance from start to finish. You want to position your body in a shallow zigzag squat, or “ready position.” We teach this stance in detail in our in-person Foundations and Pop-up courses, and our online Elements course. As the name suggests, this stance makes us available for action and quick reaction.

A zigzag stance or “ready position” readies us for dance, sport, or stairs. Martina Navratilova ready for the ball, ECM Prague Open, 2006. Wikimedia

The benefits of a zigzag stance for walking down stairs

Having your behind behind with your torso angled forward from the hip joint while descending stairs has several benefits:

• It keeps your center of gravity further back so you are less likely to fall. By contrast, if you tuck your pelvis, your center of gravity goes further forward, making it more likely you will slip. This is familiar to anyone who has been on a ski slope.
• Your head aligns over your feet, allowing you to see where you are placing your feet more clearly. 
• It makes it easier to antevert your pelvis and direct body weight through your knees in a healthy way. 
• It is good practice for other activities like bending, sitting, squatting, and more. 

Gokhale Method teacher Eric Fernandez descends steps maintaining a zigzag stance.

Your glutes help you keep your balance

In coming down steps and stairs your glutes contribute to the important job of stabilizing your hips, pelvis, and sacroiliac joints. Together with other muscles they play a key role in keeping you balanced over your standing leg as the other one is smoothly lowered to the next step. The importance of our glutes for achieving stability through the hips and pelvis is one of the areas of convergence between conventional advice and the Gokhale Method®. Having your behind behind you in a zigzag stance enables the glutes to work optimally.

Try hovering in your zigzag stance for a while on one leg—you will soon feel your glutes working. Be sure not to tuck your pelvis, as this interferes with the glutes’ stabilizing ability.

Knowing where your buttock muscles are situated can help you visualize them working: gluteus maximus (left) and, underneath it, gluteus medius (right). 

The quadriceps lower you down—as well as take you up

When descending stairs, the back leg quadriceps work eccentrically to lower you with control as your front foot approaches the step below.

The “quads” are four muscles on the front of the thigh that insert at the knee. Wikipedia

Notice the quads of the supporting back leg working to lower the body’s weight.

Externally rotated feet v. internally rotated feet

Another important ingredient in coming down stairs is external rotation of the feet and legs. This is the natural angle for the feet, and encourages optimal alignment of the knees, hips, and pelvis. 

The feet of this woman in Odisha, India, have retained a healthy angle outward.

Externally rotated feet are also preferable to feet straight ahead as this enables more of your standing foot to contact the step securely while you lower your other leg. 

Externally rotated feet encourage healthy alignment of both the foot and leg.

Internally rotating your feet will, over time, collapse your arches, and create bunions and knee problems. You will also be more likely to trip over your toes. If you currently have this habit, adopt a mild turnout of about 5° to give your muscles and joints time to adapt to change. You can read more about foot angle here. 

Internally rotated feet are problematic for your structure, and your safety.

Best next action steps for newcomers

If you would like insight on your posture, consider scheduling an Initial Consultation, online, or in person.

You can sign up below to join one of our upcoming FREE Online Workshops. . .

Welcome to the third blog post in our series on running. My name is Michelle Ball, and I am a Gokhale Method® teacher in Tasmania. I am a lifelong runner and am passionate about sharing my experience with beginners as well as seasoned runners and everyone in between. Even if you don’t run, but do wear shoes, this blog post is for you!

Active feet come first

When it comes to advice about running, our feet often get sidelined by the subject of shoes. If you missed Part 2, which is about how to build healthy, active feet, we recommend you catch up here. 

The job of a good running shoe—performance and protection

At the level of elite sport, running shoes are designed with increasingly sophisticated technologies to enhance performance. Time will tell what long-term effect these may have on athletes. From the Gokhale Method® point of view the primary purpose of all shoes is to protect our feet and our weight-bearing joints while still allowing us to move as Nature intended. 

A lightweight, barefoot-style shoe gives my feet sufficient protection and lets them be active on a soft, forgiving surface like this sandy coastal trail.

Cushioning the joints

Over the last 50 years, the increase in urban running on hard surfaces, combined with a reduction in healthy posture and biomechanics, has made for a perfect storm of running injuries. These include runner’s knee (patellofemoral syndrome), Achilles tendonitis, shin splints (stress involving microfractures of the tibia), and plantar fasciitis (inflammation of the bottom of the foot). The design of modern running shoes has seen many innovations, twists, and turns, but one clear trend has been to increase the amount of protective padding in the form of thicker, spongier soles, air bladders, and gel at chambers. Whilst some degree of cushioning for the joints is desirable when running on unnaturally hard surfaces, it is now thought that overly thick soles reduce proprioceptive sensitivity and actually encourage runners to hit the ground harder. 

This contemporary road running shoe is heavily padded. From the Gokhale Method perspective, such bulk interferes with our ability to feel the ground and make softer landings and can encourage ankle turnover. Run4it

Strong, responsive feet combined with the natural gait pattern that arises from healthy posture can enable you to land more softly and avoid injury. Building in extreme cushioning cannot compensate for excessive heel strike and its damaging impact on poorly aligned joints. 

Healthy alignment of the ankle

The first time I experienced a running injury was in my twenties. I had bought a new pair of shoes. The salesman measured me and recommended shoes that were designed to prevent overpronation (inward turn) of the foot. They felt good in the store, but after rolling my ankles more than once, I realized the shoes recommended were predisposing me to injury. I found out later that I tended to supinate my feet very slightly and not pronate them. Having shoes that were heavily padded on the inside edge to keep my foot from rolling in, increased the chance of my foot rolling out. The result for me was torn lateral ligaments and crutches on several occasions for six weeks at a time. Once I even had a hairline fracture on the ankle coming down off a boulder. I learned the hard way how important it is to have your ankles well aligned. After buying shoes for normal ankle alignment, I didn’t roll my ankles anymore.

Your weight should align centrally and distribute evenly (left). In overpronation (center) weight bears down more on the inner foot and the ankle veers inward, and in supination (right) weight is carried on the outer foot as the ankle veers outward.

You can do a simple check on your ankle alignment using a mirror or have someone take a photograph. You want to be able to see your heel and ankle from behind.

An overpronated foot may show distortion of the Achilles tendon (right). Wikimedia

Poor ankle alignment may also show up as an ankle bone protruding markedly over the edge of the heel. Here my inner ankle bone shows I am overpronating my foot.

Kidney-bean shaping my foot has now aligned my ankle well. The Achilles tendon is straight, and each ankle bone is better aligned on either side of the heel. 

You can also get useful information by examining the soles of your shoes, which may show more wear and tear along the inner (overpronation) or outer (supination) edge. Check several pairs to ensure that what you see is not peculiar to just one pair of shoes. Compare the left and right shoe.

Learning to correct flat feet

The postural techniques that we teach in our in-person Foundations Course, online Elements, and Pop-up courses, will often be sufficient to correct overpronation, or “flat feet” as it’s commonly known. Here you can learn the detail of, for example, kidney-bean shaping your feet and externally rotating your legs, with a teacher to guide you.

If, after putting some time and effort into solving the problem, it persists, we recommend that you get advice from a good running shop and use your Gokhale Method knowledge to help choose a shoe appropriate for you. They can advise you on which particular shoes can best support you while you continue to work on your posture, remodeling your feet, and realigning your ankles. As you can see in the diagram below, both these measures can support a healthier structure.

This diagram shows how overpronation of the foot can misalign the ankle, knee, hip and spinal joints further up the chain.

Insoles and orthotics as training devices

An insole can add the necessary padding and support to help you transition from a padded shoe to a thinner or barefoot style running shoe. It is important to make this transition alongside learning protective and strengthening posture and foot work. Take your time—start with occasional short training runs in your new shoes, build up the proportion of your running in them gradually, and be very attentive to your form. 

In the Gokhale Method, we teach students to use the contours of an insole as a training device, gripping it to actively strengthen the arches of the feet, rather than just to prop them up. If it is best for you to use a more padded shoe, perhaps because you run on hard surfaces and/or have some degree of joint degeneration, then it will likely have a molded footbed that you can use in this way. 

If you have prescription orthotic insoles to correct overpronation or supination, don’t stop using them abruptly. Try using them less often as your feet gain the strength to support themselves better.

Healthy shoes need to be foot-shaped!

One of the most common faults with modern shoes—including running shoes—is the shape of the toe area, or toe box. The toe box of most shoes is tapered to some degree, which distorts the natural kidney-bean foot shape that the Gokhale Method encourages. We are all familiar with the pointed toe in many women’s fashion shoes, men’s winklepickers, and even cowboy boots—yet it surprises me how this tapering persists in sports and activity footwear. Even some shoes marketed as “barefoot” or “natural” reflect the conventional wisdom of a straight foot, rather than a healthy bean-shaped one. 

             
Most running shoes assume the feet to be straight and tapered at the toes (left). Nature’s blueprint for our feet maintains the external rotation and kidney-bean shape that we all have as infants (right). This is preserved throughout adulthood in traditional societies and explained in Esther Gokhale’s book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back.

Note the bean-shaped contours and wide toes of this Indian woman’s feet. (Odisha, India, 2017) 
This strong, active foot would be constrained and deformed by a tapered running shoe.

Tipping forward/curve in modern shoes

Shoes with an upward toe curve have become increasingly popular. People like the feeling of forward momentum that they give, and they can encourage the glutes to work. Better to learn to use your glutes anyway, then this feature isn’t necessary, and you avoid the downside—the upward toe curve encourages your foot to peel off the ground passively, rather than grab and propel you forward. 

An upward toe curve depresses the transverse arch at the base of the toes. This concavity directs excessive weight through the ball of the foot and contributes to weaker plantar muscles and push-off. Run4it

I hope this blog post has helped you with your choice of running shoes. If you are in the market for a new pair, enjoy shopping with new confidence and purpose.

Welcome to the second blog post in our series on running. My name is Michelle Ball, and I am a Gokhale Method™ teacher in Tasmania. I am a life-long runner, and am passionate about sharing my experience with beginners and would-be beginners, as well as seasoned runners and everyone in between. If you missed Part 1, you can catch up here. 

Reactivate your feet

When it comes to advice about running, the feet often get overlooked as the subject immediately turns to shoes. While shoes are an important subject (spoiler alert! Part 3 is about shoes), I prefer to start with that miracle of bioengineering that actually does the work—your feet.

Our feet become very passive from walking on flat, featureless surfaces rather than natural, more undulating terrain. They are also constrained, misshapen and deconditioned by less-than-ideal footwear, which, sadly, includes many running shoes on the market.

Running on sand trains my feet to grab the ground and push it behind me.

Learning to engage and strengthen my feet has been a game changer, enabling me to recover from old running injuries and enjoy running into my sixth decade. I would therefore like to share some well chosen exercises you can do in addition to training on the job. These will both strengthen your feet and train them in better patterns of muscle recruitment. Your feet will soon engage more actively than they are likely used to doing. 

Some basic anatomical knowledge can help us get to know and appreciate our feet. This beautiful 1850s engraving (by Henry Vandyke Carter, Gray’s Anatomy) illustrates the primary arch that gives the foot its convexity. Wikimedia

Exercise 1: Inching your way to stronger feet

Inchworm is an excellent warm-up exercise, mobilizing the toe joints, mid foot, and heel bone, contracting and releasing the plantar muscles, and lifting the inner arches and also the transverse arch which spans the base of the toes. It mimics the grabbing action our feet naturally make when accustomed to walking on more varied surfaces.

This video shows how my plantar muscles contract and release to inch my foot forward. I alternately release my heel, and then my toes, from the ground.

Exercise 2: Kidney-bean shaping the feet.

One of my favorite Gokhale Method® concepts to help develop strong, functional feet, is “kidney-bean shaping.” Like inchworm, it strengthens the four layers of plantar muscle, helps raise the inner arches, and also preserves the transverse arch which spans the base of the toes. Restoring tone in these areas confers the springiness you are looking for and protects against common foot problems such as plantar fasciitis, Morton’s neuroma, and bunions. Infant’s feet have this more bean-like shape, and this is the shape preserved into adulthood among more traditional, nonindustrialized societies around the world.

Infants’ feet have a notably bean-like shape.

In nonindustrial societies a bean-shaped foot is maintained throughout life.

In addition, kidney-bean shaping the foot enables us to find a healthy outward angle for the feet and legs, and weight in our heels when standing. This multipurpose exercise is taught in all three formats for learning the Gokhale Method—our in-person Foundations course, our online Elements course, and our Pop-up course. Directions can also be found in Esther Gokhale’s number one best-selling book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, and her DVD (streamable), Back Pain: The Primal Posture™ Solution.

These photos show how, if you have a tendency toward flat feet (left), kidney-bean shaping can restore your arches, and counter any tendency to being pigeon-toed (right). It also guides your big toe home, reducing bunions. Modeled by Tegan Kahn, our Gokhale Method teacher in Australia.

Exercise 3: Bob before you jog

If you are not in the habit of jogging, or even if you do so already, it is good to ensure you jog with spring in your feet. This contributes to both push off and, most importantly for injury prevention, absorbs energy on impact. This is a natural, effective, and sophisticated mechanism that uses your muscles and foot structure rather than relying on heavily padded shoes to cushion your landing. It helps care for and protect all the weight-bearing joints in the body, as well as your feet. 

CAUTION: If you have back pain or reason to believe you may have spinal degeneration, we recommend you take one of our courses to learn appropriate techniques to protect your spine before doing this exercise.

Getting started with bobbing 

I recommend you start bobbing by shifting from one foot to the other with the heels scarcely leaving the ground. Initially just a few minutes may be plenty, and you can develop resilience for greater bounce and duration over a number of weeks. I like to suggest students play music and make it a dance. A few tracks each day will quickly build strength in your feet. 

Esther demonstrates bobbing on the feet. These clips are from her 1-2-3 Move program for Alumni. Each 15-minute Dance Party has bobbing covered!

Bobbing is a very adaptable exercise for all levels of foot strength—from slowly shifting your weight from one foot to the other, to your first split second of being airborne. As you get stronger you can intensify the work with more skipping and even hopping. 

Free Online Workshops

If you would like to find out more about how the Gokhale Method can help support you, whether you are currently sedentary or a seasoned runner, sign up to join one of Esther’s upcoming FREE Online Workshops.