If you follow me (or Unshoes) on Instagram, you know that I advocate walking with your feet pointed straight forward. I often compare our bodies to cars. If the wheels are not aligned, then they wear out quickly and you get horrible gas milage. One of my own personal struggles is correcting this in my own gait and stance. I tend to walk and even stand with my feet pointed outward. In order to correct yourself, you need to have awareness of what actually needs to be changed. It is difficult to always be aware of how you move so I use outside things to help me measure my body alignment and increase my own awareness. One of the things I use to increase awareness is by looking at my footprints. I often feel like I’m walking really well with my feet pointed forward and then when I turn around and look at my footprints in the dirt, I see that what I felt was not the same as reality! While this can be discouraging, it is also liberating.
As you can see, my feet were obviously pointing outward and it appears that I was putting more weight than usual on the inside (arch) of my foot.
This past weekend, I had the opportunity to go out on a hunting trip with my brother-in-law. He was coming to hunt in an area not too far away from my home and I decided that I could use a break and some time in the great outdoors. The area he was hunting in was near the Coral Pink Sand Dunes so we did a lot of walking through sand. We went out searching for deer and when we came back to the vehicle, I was a little disappointed to see how badly I was walking! My feet were not only pointed outward but it appeared as though I was putting more weight on the inside of my feet like someone who is flat footed. This made me think. I don’t normally walk on the inside of my feet. As I continued, I attempted to walk correctly with my feet pointing forward and with more weight on the outsides of my feet. I very quickly came to realize that this is an inefficient way to walk in sand! No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t walk well unless I let my feet point outward more. Because sand is a soft and unstable surface, walking with my feet pointed out and with more weight on the inside, made my feet act more like paddles in the sand and it propelled me forward more efficiently. I was amazed at how quickly my body had adapted to my surroundings without any conscious effort or awareness of it!
I learned two major lessons from this experience:
First, it is extremely common for people in our modern age to walk with their feet pointed out and it is also extremely common for people to have flat feet. I can’t help but to wonder if that is because our footwear is so cushioned and supportive that our body thinks that it is walking in sand or some kind of soft and unstable surface so it changes the gait patterns to be more efficient in the environment that it is in? This is just a theory but one thing is for certain, the body adapts to the environment!
Second, this reinforced the idea that there really is not ONE correct way of walking because our body adapts to our environment to give us the best possible gait pattern for the terrain that we are on. There is a viral video being passed of a man who is a medieval historian. He claims that until structured shoes were invented, people in medieval times walked on their toes rather than a heel-to-toe pattern that we do today. He is right in the fact that our shoes change our gait. Our body is simply adapting to the environment that our shoes give us. However, the evidence that we are supposed to be walking on our toes is very weak and mostly based off medieval paintings. My experience is that walking on the ball of the foot is totally natural if one is in very rough terrain without shoes, or trying to walk very quietly (eg. stalking prey while hunting). In situations where the terrain is more even and predictable, a gentle heel to toe motion is natural. Apparently in sand, pointing the feet outward is somewhat natural.
If our bodies are so capable of adapting to our environment, I am of the persuasion that the best thing we can do to improve our gait is to be selective and aware of the environment we put our feet in. If you are developing a certain issue, it may simply be the fact that your body is adapting to your specific environment. Yes, we develop bad habits over time and it is good to increase our awareness of how we move. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t try to work on aligning our bodies. I’m simply saying that it is easier and faster to take control over your environment in order to make changes to your body mechanics. I exclusively wear minimal footwear and that has changed how I walk. My focus recently has been doing more walking and even some hiking without any footwear at all. I don’t advocate this unless you are ready for the consequences, but I do advocate making changes for improvement.
I’d love to hear your thoughts. How do you think your environment is affecting your body? How can you improve your life by changing your environment?