Thinking back to my teens, I distinctly remember hearing my mum talking about going for a walk and thinking to myself “what a lazy form of exercise”. I thought, “my parents just got slack, that’ll never happen to me”, and “why walk when you can run??”. 

How immature and completely wrong I was! 

As a teenager without a car, walking ten minutes each way to the train, then a further twenty minutes each way from my stop to school at the other end. Walking across the school campus between classes, attending regularly PE and a variety of daily sports. How was I to know that in fact I WAS walking as part of my routine. That the reason I could run so easily was because I had such a solid base of strength from my high, yet totally unnoticed, incidental daily walking. 

At university and driving my first car, the walking decreases slightly, then to my first job sitting at a desk, I still walk to take the train into the city but am hardly on my feet through the day.  Another few years on and I move into the city. I don’t need to take the train so I ride my bike door to door, living the dream!

Still sitting most of the day, but I’m at the gym doing classes 5-6 times per week so able to keep up my fitness… 

But wait! Where did my walking go? 

It just so happens that around six months after the change to bike and loss of walk to/from the train station I sustained my first running injury. Coincidence? Maybe not… 

So what are the benefits of keeping up walking in your routine, and why might it become an issue when we stop? 

1. Hip Stability

Our hips are the most stable joints in our body. The most stable hip position is a flexed hip positions, for example sitting or squatting positions. In this position the top of our leg bone sits deep into our hip joint and is stabilised by the bony joint surfaces, requiring less muscle control to maintain the position. 

When we are standing there is less of this natural structural stability, and our muscles need to work to provide stability. 

For this reason walking actually requires far more muscle stability and strength than sitting at a desk, or even bike riding. 

How much activity or exercise do you do in a standing position?

2. Avoid foot and ankle pain and injury 

Now I want you to imagine an apple, and a tennis ball. First take the apple and bang it repetitively onto the ground with moderate force. It shouldn’t take long for the apple to begin to break down and be crushed by the force into the ground. Now take the tennis ball and repeat the same thing. The tennis ball would take hours, if not weeks to show signs of breakdown. 

The apple and tennis ball can be likened to the well trained foot and ankle (tennis ball), or the untrained and weak foot and ankle. Someone that is a regular walker and has developed adequate strength and maintained regular loading will have a better resistance to load, whereas the untrained foot and ankle, like the apple will be far more susceptible to overload and failing. 

Don’t be the peach! 

3. Posture

Slumping and poor posture is more common than ever before. But we weren’t designed to slouch, just like we weren’t designed to sit all day. 

Walking has the ability to “wake up” all of our key postural muscles. Our natural arm swing promotes activation of the shoulder stabilising muscles, just like looking ahead or at the scenery improves neck position and postural activation. 

I will say here that it is also possible to walk in poor postures, and this is more likely if we have been sitting in poor postures and are less active. Be mindful about standing tall when walking. 

Standing up regularly from your desk throughout the day and even just walking to the coffee machine can be enough to help improve your posture when you sit back down. Getting up and walking for longer will have a more lasting effect. 

4. Improve your running! 

I see multiple clients that come to me with running injuries, determined to increase their running to 10, 20km, yet never walk for more than 10minutes throughout the day. Sure they still go to the gym or do other forms of exercise like swimming or riding, but they just aren’t accustomed to prolonged time on their feet. Our bodies aren’t capable of jumping ahead to the heavier demands of running, without first tolerating the slightly less loaded, but similar, activity of standing and walking. 

In Physiotherapy we often talk about “functional training” being the best style of training to progress in any given sport or task. This essentially means that whichever exercise most closely mimics the actual task or sport needing improvement, will be the best exercise to achieve the required improvement. So it makes sense that you should first be competent in strong and prolonged walking, before progressing to running. 

Conclusion:

Think back to my story and slow decrease in daily walking. My endurance for standing, let alone walking started to severely suffer. I didn’t notice this at first as I wasn’t trying any prolonged walking or running and my gym work was fine. However when I attempted to get back into running, it didn’t take long for my body to start breaking down (like the peach) and injury to result. 

If this story sounds familiar to you, or maybe you’ve already noticed pain symptoms developing with standing, walking or running. Perhaps you should consider whether your body has been primed to handle whatever load is causing the aggravation.

If you’re having any issues with building your running. Feel free to swing down and see me at Evolutio Sports Physiotherapy in Richmond, Melbourne. You can book in here.

This is Kristina. She’s cool, like us. She’s one of our senior physio’s with more experience in the snow than many of us have on land. You can book in with her here for a session face to face. Or here for a virtual appointment.