Walk this way

Sports injuries can often be caused by poor running and walking techniques.

If I had a pound for every time a fitness expert said to me something like “who made your trainers – the council?” I’d be able to afford a really great pair. Trainer-bashing is the fitness instructor equivalent of GP’s “it’s probably a virus” – the thing they blame when they don’t exactly know what’s going on.

So I wasn’t entirely surprised when Wayne Edwards a musculo-skeletal podiatrist, told me that he’d like to throw my footwear on a bonfire. But it was refreshing to hear from him that bad footwear is usually only about 15 per cent of the problem or 15 per cent of the solution. “But the most important things to look at,” he says, “are the faulty movement patterns, anatomy, alignment and neuron-muscular control.”

These are all components of the relatively new sports science of biomechanics, which looks at the connection between human locomotion and pain, and how to correct bad postural or movement patterns, or “aberrant gaits” to avoid injury. Edwards diagnoses faulty movement patterns by gait analysis.

During gait analysis, the subject – in this case, bunioned, badly shod, treadmill phobic me – is made to lie down to check whether both legs are the same length. Lots of people’s aren’t which can lead to postural and pain problems. Then I am videoed walking and running first in bare feet, then in trainers, with the camera aimed broadly at the lower half of my body. Next I walk up and down the corridor, while Edwards watches, although that doesn’t make sense for getting a true picture as I am trying to walk well. Just like kids affect a lolloping street walk, my corridor walk is a bit put on. My real walk, I tell him, is that of a much fatter hunched, cold, lost person.

You might think gait analysis sounds like a new fangled, high tech deportment lesson. But even at St James & Lucie Clayton College, which offers a short course that includes walking; deportment in the old sense of the word is, says Judith Kark, the principal, no longer relevant. “Old fashioned deportment style was very correct and very formal, and looked terribly staged”, she explains. The college’s method is now based on the holistic Alexander Technique.

It seems there is no ideal way to walk. Edwards holds that most of us walk pretty efficiently unless we are injured or deformed, and even if there is no such thing as an ideal walk suitable for everybody, there is one suitable for you and your physiology. But is a treadmill walk and corridor sashay true enough to work out what I am doing wrong in real life? Edwards thinks so. Neil Messenger, a lecturer in biomechanics at Leeds University, agrees that treadmill walking and running is a true enough comparison to real life.” But”, he adds, “pains in the shins or knees, might result from over use, but gait analysis can tell you the underlying mechanical problem”. It is then up to the podiatrist, who might make orthotic devices (using casts of your feet) to adjust the roll of your feet, or a physiotherapist, to teach you corrective exercises. But it is up to the individual with the silly walk to apply what they are taught.

Though the technology of gait analysis is fairly new, the basic idea can be traced back to the 19th century with Eadweard Muybridge’s staggered photographs of a galloping horse. He took them to prove that during a gallop all the horses’ legs leave the ground at the same time. After the Second World War, doctors used a basic form of gait analysis to develop better prosthetics for amputee soldiers. But only in the past few years has it been used to help professional athletes to fine-tune their running style, and now it is trickling down to the keep-fit public.

Matt Todman, of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists, says: “Gait analysis is important. Without the right quality of motion, headaches, shoulder pain, back pain and knee pain can occur. When people see a video of themselves, they can see the things they are doing wrong.”

A good gym trainer will be able to spot a movement style that is causing pain or injury, and could suggest gait analysis, which is done through physiotherapy and podiatry clinics. Edwards cites a statistic that 30% of new gym members drop out after a few sessions “because they go from sitting with poor postures for long periods to exercising with weights”.

A personal trainer can see what you may be doing wrong just by watching you run on the treadmill. However, Neil Messenger thinks that for someone who works out two or three times a week with no pain or problems, gait analysis would not help to prevent a problem that might arise from a bad movement style. A style that looks bad to him might work for a female marathon runner.

Just how important gait is becomes clear when Edwards and Paul Godfrey, a chartered manipulative physiotherapist, tell me that the reason my feet hurt when I run is partly to do with over-pronation- the feet flattening out too much when they hit the ground- and because the muscle in my right buttock is not communicating with my brain. I can see the slackness myself after a few painful reruns of My Arse: The Video.

The hard bit is learning how to strengthen the brain-to-muscle connection. Godfrey says: “It is not about strengthening a muscle but making that brain-to-muscle connection instantaneous. When you walk or run, each muscle in sequence has to do a certain job. Life today is sit, sit, sit, and sitting badly, which causes those central muscles around the pelvis, bum, stomach, and lower back to switch off, so the brain-to-muscle connection becomes sluggish”

Godfrey teaches corrective exercises that be done anywhere, including bed. My first involves trying to tense my buttocks without tensing my thighs. It does not compute at first, but after mastering lying down, one progresses to sitting, standing, and finally moving, until doing it the right way becomes automatic. Just think, I could have avoided all this if I had heeded my mother’s cries of “Sit up straight! Don’t drag your feet!”