walking form

Mother and son in a tribal Orissan village demonstrating excellent walking form. Notice that their heels remain on the floor well into their stride.

Do you have tight psoas muscles? Do you suspect the cause is too much time spent sitting in your daily life? There’s a complementary activity that helps counterbalance the time we spend sitting: walking — or, more specifically, glidewalking. Glidewalking helps balance our sitting in numerous ways — walking is dynamic versus sitting which is static. Yang balances Yin, viewed in the framework of traditional Chinese medicine. One underappreciated way in which walking can balance sitting pertains to the psoas muscle.

The psoas muscle originates on the front of the sides of all the lumbar vertebrae and discs, and ends on the lesser trochanter of the femur.

This pathway is quite circuitous and runs adjacent to several pelvic organs. With long hours of sitting, the psoas can adapt to a short resting length. Original image courtesy Anatomography on Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 2.1 JP.

A short psoas pulls forward on the lumbar spine any time the legs are outstretched. This is why many people are uncomfortable lying on the back with outstretched legs, and why some people feel sciatic twinges when they stand and walk. The natural antidote for this tendency of the psoas muscle to shorten in sustained sitting is glidewalking. Glidewalking is really natural or primal walking given a special name because it is a rare thing in modern times and deserves to be celebrated with a special name! Every step done with proper form naturally stretches the psoas. That amounts to 5,000 mini psoas stretches on each side if you are glidewalking the recommended 10K steps a day. This will keep your psoas in a healthy, stretched out, pliable state!

This Orissan woman demonstrates beautiful walking form with her body in line with her back leg, her back leg straightened but not locked, and her back heel staying close the ground well into her stride.

The best way to get your psoas stretches, or resets, is to punctuate your day with glidewalking. No instance of glidewalking is insignificant: glidewalking to the bathroom, glidewalking to get a glass of water, and glidewalking in kinhin (walking meditation) all help. So are the longer, more obvious instances of glidewalking such as the daily constitutional and the weekend hike.

Orissan women carrying water on their heads. Notice how the woman in front propels herself off her rear heel. This additionally gives her a healthy psoas stretch with every step she takes.

It has become popular to consider that “sitting is the new smoking.” Poor form and long stretches of uninterrupted sitting do indeed have a deleterious effect on health, but I believe that a significant unknown contributor is that most people do not walk in a way that resets the psoas muscle after it shortens during extended sitting.

Apart from responding to extended sitting, the psoas muscle is also very responsive to psychological stress. We see this in the Moro reflex in babies when they respond to loud noises and traumatic stimuli such as real or perceived falling. Addressing psoas tension is at the core of certain body modalities, such as Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE), and innovative developments in psychotherapy involving polyvagal theory.

This Rodin sculpture shows its subject well into a stride with the rear heel still down on the ground. This stance is a natural part of gait and stretches the psoas muscle.

It’s a tad complex to learn to stretch the psoas in glidewalking, but well worth the effort. It takes a combination of the following actions to do the job.

1. The rib cage needs to be anchored to stabilize the lumbar spine. Without this step, any other effort to stretch the psoas will result in arching the lower back. 

2. The back heel needs to stay on the ground a long time into a stride. Most people lift their heel up from the ground prematurely, losing the full extent of the psoas stretch that nature designed to be built into every step.

3. The gluteal muscles of the rear leg engage appropriately, further augmenting the psoas stretch.

Proper technique can help you avoid the cycle of tight psoas muscles, reduced activity, tighter psoas muscles, further-reduced activity…

How much have you succeeded in putting these pieces together? What helped the techniques coalesce? The book? The DVD? One of our courses? A topical workshop on glidewalking for our Gokhale Method Alumni? I’d love to hear from you in the comment section below.

Khaddi Sagnia, World Athletics Championships in 2015 - ©Diego Azubel / EPA

Humans have really large butts. Your cat or dog, by contrast, has a very tiny bottom.

Dogs and cats have tiny bottoms

Chances are you’ve never stopped to think about how unique your own derriere is. Primate species are unique in having distinctive buttock anatomy—our buttocks allow us to sit upright without resting our weight on our feet, the way our pets do. Human buttocks, which are particularly muscular and well-developed, empower us to be bipedal, and propel us forward in walking and running. Even if you’re thinking, ‘I don’t have much of a butt at all,’ there’s no comparison between your behind—which has great potential!—and an ape's.

Our primate cousins have similar, but much less-developed gluteal muscles than we do.

Older scientific sources often cite walking as the reason for our large buttocks. Gluteus maximus and medius are important in stabilizing the pelvis and trunk—they keep us from tipping over when we lean into a brisk walk, as well as during older caveman-style activities like throwing and clubbing. (Marzke)

We also know that the gluteal muscles are key for running. The Olympic track and field athletes you’ve been watching in the last few weeks have strong glutes not only for balance, but also to power their bodies across the track, over hurdles, and through the air. All that energy and propulsion comes from the powerhouse of the lower body—the buttocks.

Khaddi Sagnia, long jumper, with well-developed glutes, walking down the track.

I believe that top athletes like Khaddi Sagnia dominate their sports not just from doing reps at the gym and on the field, but also from doing ‘Downtime Training®’—that is, practicing everyday tasks with excellent, natural form. When the glutes are strongly activated in walking, every step is a rep. This is a good example of Downtime Training.  As we can clearly see in Khaddi’s example, even her breezy walk down the track prepares her glutes for running and jumping.

Here you can see a video of Swedish long-jumper Khaddi Sagnia, who provides a beautiful example of well developed, active glutes.

Does an ideal walk select for athletic excellence, or does athletic training result in an excellent stride? I believe the two support each other. Someone who already has well-developed muscles from an excellent gait is more likely to excel at sports that involve running, jumping, and lunging; conversely, vigorous use of the glute pack and posterior chain in a sport will predispose a person to have a stronger, better co-ordinated stride. I believe that athletes competing at the Olympic level experience an upward spiral of healthy movement patterns reinforcing athletic excellence, which in turn reinforces healthy movement patterns.

Some recent scientific studies, citing electromyographic (EMG) experiments, have concluded that the gluteus maximus muscle is minimally active in many activities such as walking or climbing stairs, while being highly active during running. In an interview published in Nature about research on how humans evolved to be distance runners, Daniel Lieberman of Harvard claims that running seems to be the only reason that we have prominent buttocks. He has measured the activity of gluteus maximus in volunteers during a walk and a jog and says:

"When they walk their glutes barely fire up. But when they run it goes like billy-o." (Hopkin)

I believe that Lieberman’s finding reflects degenerate modern industrial gait more than it does an evolutionary truth about our species.

Modern-day underdeveloped butt

Lack of glute development accompanied by thoracic kyphosis

Our celebrities are not exempt from the under-developed glute phenomenon, as Taylor Swift demonstrates here.

As we see clearly in the example of Khaddi Sagnia, or other athletes, or indigenous people, or young children, the glutes are in fact actively used in walking and climbing. It’s only in very recent times that we find appreciable numbers of people who barely fire their glutes while walking.

Athletes, like the baseball players above, usually have well-developed gluteal muscles.

Maya White, Esther's oldest daughter, showing the typically toned glutes shared by young children.

The San indigenous people of the Kalahari, show well-toned glutes from walking and running with primal form.

I teach my students to glidewalk, an ancestral walking form whose mainstay is the activation of the gluteal pack of muscles. Try standing before a table or desk. Turn your right foot outwards while leaning your torso and pelvis forward. Now lift your right leg out behind you (you can hold the edge of the table for support). Your entire gluteal pack will contract – the hamstrings, gluteus maximus and gluteus medius. This is the action you want to find in every step you take.

There are other muscles that are part and parcel of a healthy gait – the calf muscles help launch the rear leg forward to its destination; the muscles on the underside of the foot help grip and grab contours on the earth – and we share these actions with other animal species. But buttock action is special – it marks us as a species, and as bipedal creatures – and it behooves us to use our butts more than most of us currently do.

A woman glidewalking in Cambodia

Scientists are right in describing the marked use of the glutes in running, and it is clear their current size is tied to an evolutionary propensity for distance running. Yet it seems unlikely that our ancestors, when they first came out of the trees, hit the ground running. Bipedal walking had to be a predecessor to running while our ancestors mastered balance and being upright. I believe prominently sized butts first developed when our ancestors began to walk upright, and that we want to follow the example of the Olympic athletes in engaging our glutes, not just when we run, but also when we walk.  This form of constant training will reinforce healthy posture, as well as strength. And if you’re really lucky, maybe you too will soon be cruising around sporting Olympic hot pants like Khaddi’s. Let us know when that happens - we’ll send our videographer over so we can all enjoy the moment!

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References

Bramble, Dennis M., and Daniel E. Lieberman. "Endurance Running and the Evolution of Homo." Nature 432.7015 (2004): 345-52. Web.

Fischer, Frederick J., and S. J. Houtz. "Evaluation of the Function of the Gluteus Maximus Muscle." American Journal of Physical Medicine 47.4 (1968): 182-91. PubMed. Web.

Hopkin, Michael. "Distance Running 'shaped Human Evolution'." Nature.com. Nature Publishing Group, 17 Nov. 2004. Web. 25 Aug. 2016. <http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041115/full/news041115-9.html>.

Lieberman, D. E. "The Human Gluteus Maximus and Its Role in Running."Journal of Experimental Biology 209.11 (2006): 2143-155. Web.

Marzke, Mary W., Julie M. Longhill, and Stanley A. Rasmussen. "Gluteus Maximus Muscle Function and the Origin of Hominid Bipedality." Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 77.4 (1988): 519-28. Web.

On our website, the top searches include, "glutes," "walking," and "butt." So I thought I'd take this chance to say a few words on the subject.

"Callipygian" is an English word of Greek origin. It means “of, pertaining to, or having beautiful buttocks”. The word, (pronounced kal-uh-PIDGE-ee-uhn), is derived from the Greek word “kalli” meaning beautiful, and “pyge” from the Greek word for rump or buttock.

Brazilian soldier on a swimming break in Cachoeira

In some cultures, a small, slim backside is preferred. But in others, it's a prominent rear end that stops traffic. Perceptions of beauty also vary over time. In Classical art, and also in the Renaissance aesthetic, the standard of female beauty included a wide posterior and hips. In recent decades, there's been an emphasis on very thin physiques, though this preference seems to be waning.

Cambodian dancers in a performance

Despite the changing nature of fashion, one thing that never goes out of style is a healthy body. So if you want to channel your inner callipygian beauty while also enhancing your overall wellness, try glidewalking. By squeezing and strengthening the gluteus muscles with each step, you'll walk your way to a regal rear!

Glidewalking in Cambodia

Facing the feet outward increases the chance of engaging the glutes, especially gluteus medius. If you're not feeling your glutes, it's probably because they're not used to working when you walk. Try taking just one step at a time and see if you can engage gluteus medius. Make sure your pelvis is tipped forward (anteverted) and try again (refer to Chapter 6 "Tallstanding" in 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back for more details). Try pointing your back foot out a little and try again. Still flummoxed? Raise the back leg up off the ground with your back leg rotated outward. This should do it. Walk one step at a time until you can contract your glutes reliably. Then smooth it out into a walk.

How to Glidewalk:

1. When initiating a stride, relax the muscles around the hip joint of the leg moving forward and engage the lower buttock muscles of the back leg to propel the body forward.

2. Towards the end of the stride, use the gluteus medius muscle (at the upper outer quadrant of your buttock) of the back leg to gently land the front foot on the ground. Try to avoid free-falling to the ground. This technique strengthens the gluteus medius, giving you firmer, higher buttocks. 

Onward and upward,
Esther