Walking Gait

Improve your Walking Gait with Pilates exercises.

Having spent many years working with older adults who have had hip and knee replacements, arthritis, back pain, and other debilitating conditions...they come to me with little or no confidence in their balance and ability to walk much farther than across their living rooms without a waking aid.

How Can Pilates help Improve Walking

1.   Improves Posture and your Confidence

Pilates is a form of exercise that strengthens and stabilizes the core muscles. 

When you have a strong stable core - everything else works freely and efficiently, including your arms and legs.

When our abdominal muscles are strong they support the spine from the inside and help to not only keep our backs healthy, but also to help us stand straighter.

How does better posture translate to a better walking gait?

When your core muscles are strong they support your spine in an upright and straight posture.

This makes it easier to keep your balance, swing your arms, and lift your knees to put one foot in front of the other and keep walking.

2.  Foot and Ankle Strength and Flexibility

Pilates exercise foundation is footwork!

Working to correct foot imbalances by improving strength and flexibility in the feet and ankles is the warmup for all of my Pilates sessions.

The corrective  footwork exercises can be performed on the Pilates Reformer, Pilates Chair, and my favorite... the Foot Corrector.

How does working the feet and ankles translate into better walking gait?

Well...when our feet are strong and flexible we have better balance; are better able to correct and make adjustments on uneven surfaces.

It's also much easier to lift our feet, knees, and hips to propel us forward so we don't shuffle our feet.

3.  Body Awareness - Balance

When we have an ideal or visual of how our body should move in space we can walk with more grace and ease.

When we consciously practice walking with better posture and using our feet to propel us forward regularly then we will eventually walk this way with ease and without thinking.

Head held high,

Chest up,

Arms swinging to provide balance and momentum forward,

Hips working to pull the knees up,

Feet and toes lifting and propelling you forward,

and... away you go with a spring in your step and a swing of your arms!

Leave walking gait and find out more ways to work on your feet and legs on the Pilates Equipment here.

Recent Articles

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