Education is key when it comes to taking power over your own health and wellness. I look at the role movement can play in your health, wellness and recovery to full and optimal function. The articles are not meant to take the place of medical advice and should not be used as such.
Is there a right way to walk?
Carol Robbins 
Are treadmills bad for you?
Is there a right way to walk? If there is, logically there must be a wrong way too. When someone asks me what is the best way to walk, I could provide a list; toes forward, heel strike, arm swing, etc., but walking is so beneficial for taking us out of our head! The last thing I want is my client to be robotically walking around thinking about how they are walking. Walking is something we figure out starting at the end of our first year. No one has to teach a baby how to walk, the desire to get up on the feet and start to motor is hardwired. But that doesn't mean we aren't teaching our kids by example. You have a gait pattern that can be identified as specific to you, but whole families have a gait "accent," partly because we share genetic traits such as foot, hip, and spine architecture, and partly because we are influenced by those around us when we are learning those new skills.
Rather than provide a list, what I do instead is teach my clients exercises that come in handy for walking so they can bring different skills to different situations. Having alternatives helps, so that you aren't always reliant on the same muscular patterns for a task, which can potentially lead to overuse injury, or an inability to navigate unfamiliar terrain.
What is more important to me than how my clients are covering ground, is what ground they are covering. Most of us think only of quantity when considering a walking practice - how many steps, how much time we walk. The quality of a walk is rarely considered, and indeed, sometimes an inconvenient walk is less desirable than one that is convenient and will add more steps to the pedometer.
For example, when I am walking with someone, the polite me likes to ask something like "would you prefer the street with the steep hill or the street that is flat" to get where we are going. The steep hill is obviously harder and most people select the flat street, even if we need to walk further to get to it. But the hilly street gives us variety and uses different body parts in different ways to the flat street, providing a more whole body experience. I could walk 10,000 steps on a flat sidewalk across town or I could walk half that distance through a ravine or along a rocky beach. Both are advantageous, but I'll choose the walk with variety every time.
Different environments use different body parts, muscles, skills and strategies. Each demands a different body use and different skills. The more we expose ourselves to a variety of experiences, the more capacity we build, and the more choices we have.
As winter approaches and people move indoors, you might be tempted to use a treadmill for your walking needs. Treadmills are a whole other category for walking, and require a different walking pattern and different walking skills. Often walking indoors is safer and more accessible, so if possible, I try to find a track rather than jump on a treadmill. However, if you have one, or need to use one, it's good to know just how it is affecting your body.
In covering ground, we generally have a gait pattern where the foot on the ground pushes back against the surface it's on, and this pressing down and back "rows" the pelvis (and the trunk attached to it) forward. So we are using muscles on the back of the hips to extend the femur (thigh bone) and the muscles down the front of the hip (flexors) lengthen to accommodate this "posterior push-off."
The flexors then rebound from this longer state and swing the leg forward passively for the next step. The "work" occurs in the back of the hip and the action is hip extension.
On a surface that is moving under us, we need to pick up our foot and swing it forward or else we risk being carried backwards and being deposited on the floor behind the treadmill. This essentially reverses our normal gait pattern and we are shortening our hip flexors to pull the leg forward. The work occurs in the front of the hip and the action is hip flexion.
This isn't a huge problem, because this is a gait pattern you would use in some environments, such as climbing a hill. So it exists as a choice in the broader category of gait. But it's not one you'd normally use on flat, level ground. So the more you use this and not other patterns in the gait category, the less variety and capacity you will have, and you might end up with pretty tight hip flexors as well, particularly if you are bringing a "chair body" (i.e., a body that spends several hours a day in a sitting position) to the treadmill.
This can be offset with exercises that address tight hip flexors, but the best strategy is to vary your walks when possible, and try not to always walk the same way over the same surfaces.
There is another major difference in staying in one place while the ground moves under us; we are used to a stream of images going by our eyes as we move through the world, and our brains process that information in a specific way. When our visual field doesn’t change, but we are “moving” - there is a disconnect in our visual field processing. If you have experienced a feeling of continuing to fall forward after stepping off the treadmill, you know what I mean!
So there is no one right way to walk, although you might be walking one way! The key is to vary your environment, surface, and grade as much as possible, and not be too attached to the idea that only a certain number of steps or minutes is the only variable to consider when planning a walking routine that serves your whole body.
