Click on NOTE CATEGORIES to browse by topic, read through the entire archives, or type a topic in the search box.Biomechanist Katy Bowman and biologist Jeannette Loram discuss gait and question whether there really is a ‘right’ way to walk.
They explain the mechanics of walking gait, outlining the phases and shapes that each leg and foot should move through during the gait cycle. They propose that an ‘abnormal’ gait would be one that is missing one of these phases or shapes. They also suggest a framework for assessing walking based on efficiency, symmetry and balance. They talk about gait deficits such as shuffling and waddling and what is missing in those gait patterns, while acknowledging that we are all individuals and not all gait variation is abnormal or needs to be corrected.
Katy suggests we cannot get to the heart of this question without considering human movement ecology; particularly the volume we walk, the shoes we walk in and, for most modern humans, the lack of a requirement to walk long distances efficiently. They discuss this in relation to human hunter-gatherers as well as other animals.
Finally they answer a couple of listener questions on the rather unusual gait seen in racewalking.
OVERVIEW
(time codes are approximate)
00:09:00 - Definitions. (Jump to section)
00:18:30 - Gait Patterns (Jump to section)
00:29:00 - Gait in Hunter-Gatherer Populations (Jump to section)
00:35:15 - Stable Movement (Jump to section)
00:49:30 - Tweaking Your Gait (Jump to section)
00:52:00 - Gait Abnormalities (Jump to section)
00:54:50 - Race Walking Question (Jump to section)
LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW
Other Pelvic List Articles on the Website
Sashaying and Walking Downhill
William Whiting, Biomechanics Professor
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
(Theme Music)
This is the Move Your DNA podcast, a show where movement science meets your everyday life. I'm Katy Bowman, Biomechanist, Author, and I'm about to walk across England. And I'm Jeannette Loram, Biologist, Movement Teacher, and I'm gutted that I am not walking across England with Katy. Every body is welcome here. Let's get started.
(Music Fades)
KATY: Okay, so we're going to talk about gait today. Are you as excited as I am?
JEANNETTE: I am. And you know what I'm like. I had so many thoughts on this topic and I know I will learn a lot from you. Yeah, I'm really excited about this
KATY: The reason I wanted to have this conversation - it really came up, I mean, it's probably been almost 10 years at this point, but I had written something and shared it on Facebook as you do 10 years ago. And it was about, I don't know if it was like an exercise for really optimizing a gait pattern - probably the pelvic list. And there was one person who was very upset at this idea that there was a right way to walk and when I was talking about we're pathologizing everything, and now it's walking. And I was trying to take in what was being said. And anytime I have an interaction like that, it always makes me really drill down what I think and why. And I have had this lingering question; is there a right way to walk? A natural way to walk? A normal way to walk? You know, whatever word we want to call it. It's tricky to have conversations around things that are, you know, natural or normal to the human. I think in biology, it's less so. And then I'm also going, I don't think I would be having this conversation if we were talking about wolves.
JEANNETTE: I think that's right. Although, interestingly enough, many, many years ago, I remember one of the courses that I most enjoyed as a biology undergraduate was animal locomotion. And in that it was just accepted, this is the way a flatworm moves, you know, and this is the way... But I think the only other animal that you might have that conversation with is another domestic species, a dog, for instance.
KATY: For sure.
JEANNETTE: Because you see, I have a Labrador mix, and they have often a very swaying gait, which is considered potentially an issue that you need to watch for regarding their hips.
KATY: Right.
JEANNETTE: So that's the only other animal I would see us having that conversation about.
KATY: I absolutely do see us having it with dogs.
JEANNETTE: Or maybe horses.
KATY: and horses too. Yes.
JEANNETTE: For the racing.
KATY: But these are animals that are under heavily, like they're heavily...
JEANNETTE: Selected?
KATY: No. I mean, yes, but when I want to put humans into that category too. To me, what these three animals have is very altered physical experiences. Their environments are so radically different that we are having these conversations because perhaps of this environment. And that's what's always really been of interest to me is in wildlife biology, where the movement of a species is so important - not necessarily the patterns of movement - but the distances that it traverses, where it's able to access, you know, highways, you know, and now being a big issue interfering with...
JEANNETTE: Migration.
KATY: ...foraging and migration patterns of different animals. You're going to start seeing then trickle down the joint issues of an animal. And then starting to be concerned about spines and hips. So with horses and dogs are things that people have as pets that are more expensive and maybe more awareness is around that. And then of course, same issue for humans. So yeah, I want to have that conversation, but first I want to talk about why are we not walking together in England?
JEANNETTE: Oh, I know. It's like the only time, I think, in at least a decade that I've not been in the country. But I am leaving to have a different movement adventure. I think I'm going to be spending the time that you are walking, swimming. Or actually I should say snorkeling.
KATY: That's great. Well, let's talk about how my training is going. Not at all. I've been sick.
JEANNETTE: Oh, that's right. Of course.
KATY: I have been sick. And so luckily I trust my physicality. So I've been sick for a week, very sick, very fatigued. So I'm going, well, hopefully my body perceives this as some sort of rest and restoration and maybe some bits are healing in a certain way before I go out and start logging my miles. And the one other thing is shoes. I don't have my shoes picked out yet.
JEANNETTE: Yeah, that's a tricky one because you probably don't have shoes that are necessarily suitable for wet England in October.
KATY: Yes, that is the ultimate issue is different weather. And then it's not just the weather. I mean, I can get a boot that's good for it. It’s can I walk 20 miles a day every day in this boot? What I would normally wear to go out for four or five miles - like an easy boot to pull over - that slight sort of wobbling around in a shoe does not work for lots of miles and many days. And a blister can really undermine a whole operation like this.
JEANNETTE: That's right. Yeah. So for very wet, which is where I am, which is probably wetter than where you will be at that time of year.
KATY: Ok
JEANNETTE: Freet footwear have a great low profile boot, the Mudee and the Tundra. The Tundra is a bit higher, so it does restrict your ankle a bit. But they are waterproof. They're not like a hundred percent if things go down the top. But they are waterproof and I combine them with a waterproof sock and they keep me pretty dry and warm in Scotland. So that's an option. And then sometimes if it's not too cold, I just accept that I'm going to have wet feet, but I'll be comfortable. And it's not cold and you know, wool socks or something that's not going to feel cold. Yeah. So I think it depends a little bit on whether you definitely want to be dry...
KATY: I don't. You know, I am comfortable being wet and uncomfortable. The one issue that I'm just a little concerned about is that friction when feet are wet. You know, I don't want anything wearing down on my skin. So I know that my backpack is probably going to be full of sock changes.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: That's going to be a big thing. Well, other than that, I know let's just keep our fingers crossed. Someone had mentioned that the weather there is a little more beautiful right now.
JEANNETTE: Yeah. I mean, early October, certainly in England, it's quite nice. It's even nice here. We're quite mild. So you might actually find ...
KATY: I might wear my sandals the whole time.
JEANNETTE: Yeah, you might be, you might be.
KATY: I've walked a portion before and I just wore earth runners for some of it. And then just kind of a waterproof flow shoe, you know, just a tennis shoe. And yeah, just changed my socks.
JEANNETTE: Yeah. I mean, I've walked bits of Hadrian's Wall in a sandal before. Some of it's quite good trail and it's not too wet. So you'll probably find if you throw a pair of sandals in as well, you could always have them. You can swap them out.
KATY: I'll always have them. Yeah. And let my feet maybe air out to remove any sort of friction. That's the nice thing about a sandal. Worst case scenario. I'll just walk in wet, sloppy sandals. But then I was like, how many pairs of shoes am I planning on bringing? Because I'll want some dry sandals and then some wet sandals and then a pair of tennies and then a pair of boots. And it just felt ... I'm such a minimalist. And I know you are too. It just felt really like this is too many pairs of shoes to bring. But I want to not have this experience sort of undermined by a half of a centimeter bit on my foot, you know, that has become so damaged that it can't take another step.
KATY: Okay. So let's start where we always start with everything; Which is what are we talking about? What are the words? What are the definitions?
JEANNETTE: Right. Yeah. So gait. Gait really refers to how a human or an animal walks on solid ground or how moves. I should say how moves because it's not just walking. It's everything that an animal does. For a four legged animal, like a horse or a dog, it would be gallop and canter and trots. And for us, it's walk, run or skip actually.
KATY: And sprint too.
JEANNETTE: Yeah. Is sprint different from run, would you say?
KATY: I would say it is different than run. I mean, you can visually see the difference. I guess with the four legged animals, a lot of those distinctions are given because of foot fall patterns, you know, the combination of which foot is doing what. And I don't think that we have to make that a condition for what constitutes a different gait. I think sprinting is different enough from a running that we would.
JEANNETTE: Ok. That was actually a question of mine. Because I see that sometimes you see jog, sprint, run. And I think coming from the biology perspective, I've always thought of gait as more being that recruitment of limb pattern. But actually you're saying that those, based on speed, and they look quite different.
KATY: I can fully recognize that it's a different way of putting a barrier or a boundary around what type of movement, you know, gets its own definition. But I think because sprinting is a behavior, an important behavior, not just a movement that I would want to keep it distinct. But I don't think I would just say the same for jogging. Even though speed, you know, the difference between like ... what's the difference between jogging and running? Is it just your head space and the way you do it? Because I think I would say that running is definitely having that flight phase.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: And that's what makes it distinct from walking. So I would say walking, skipping, running, sprinting.
JEANNETTE: Okay. Four.
KATY: Four.
JEANNETTE: Nice. Okay, great. And what are we going to talk about today? Walking.
KATY: Walking. Yeah, right.
JEANNETTE: Talking about that type of gait, a walking gait. And you alluded to the difference between a walk and a run, which is the run has the flight phase where two feet are off the ground. And walking only has one. But that's just not walking in a nutshell. Could you kind of round out what makes a walking gait?
KATY: Well, yeah, it's not just locomotion. It's not overground locomotion without a flight phase. Because in biomechanics, there are subcategories of assessment of looking at what the structure is doing. So there's two phases to a walking gait: stance phase and swing phase. You're really looking at a single leg at a time. As far as the right leg is concerned, you're either standing on it - you're either using it as a support underneath you, or your weight is on the left leg and that right leg is now swinging.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: So you're just in this process of standing and swinging on your right leg and your left leg. And you're switching back and forth. And then when we look at that individual leg, it depends on if you're looking at a swing leg or a stance leg, there are further breakdowns of the ... it's really the shape that those pieces are making underneath you. So for stance leg, you know, if it's your, again, you're taking a step, you've landed on your right leg and now your right leg is your support leg, left leg is swinging. So I'm zoomed into that stance, that stance leg, and I'm looking to see, did the heel hit?
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: And then there is going from just having that heel on the ground to having the front of the foot come down on the ground. We break that down into phases too. So it used to be heel strike and then foot flat. You know, the foot is now flat on the ground. But I'd break that actually into two steps. There'd be the foot coming down, kind of reaching through the center of the foot before the front of the foot fully lands on the ground. And then you've got - your heel’s got to come up off the ground. Because eventually the stance leg has got to become a swing leg. So then the heel's coming up off the ground. And then finally the toe leaves the ground and now that leg is in the air and it is swinging.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: So we're looking for those pieces. And then in the swing, we're looking for to break down, similarly. The swing is in its own three: pre-swing, mid-swing, end-swing phase. So we're looking at your limbs as they're moving through this process and want to see all of those stages represented. And when we don't see those stages represented, we'd be like, there's a problem here with the gait.
JEANNETTE: Right. Ok.
KATY: Those are all the elements we want to see. It's not really, I imagine, unlike a speech pathologist would want to make sure they hear a certain number of sounds.
JEANNETTE: Right. Yes. And shapes of the mouth and...
KATY: That's right.
JEANNETTE: ... movements of the tongue.
KATY: Yeah. You know, you would be like, oh, you don't make Rs. So there's something - you're, you're still getting from point A to point B. Conversationally. You can make words and sentences and do all these things. But there's these sounds dropping out of what you're saying. And so a speech therapist would come in and say, we see that humans make these set of sounds when they're conversing and there's some missing. Same goes for gait.
JEANNETTE: So to go back to our overarching philosophical question, we can perhaps look at it from the other way; What do we see when we, there's definitely something wrong. I think, I think sometimes it's easier to see when a gait isn't - is there something off?
KATY: Right.
JEANNETTE: So what might we see if some of those things are missing? For example, the foot. I think I could really go to the foot because it's quite easy for people to see that if the foot doesn't clear the ground properly, you can have this foot drop. Could you explain maybe a few of these definitely pathological gaits.
KATY: Right. Like shuffling. Shuffling is a big one. And you can see it in more often older adults. But sometimes your parent will yell at you; pick up your feet when you're walking. Right. So there's just sort of like a laziness.
JEANNETTE: Well, there can be an attitude, a teenage attitude.
KATY: That's right. Or just if you're catching a lot of edges with your toe, for example, it would maybe be an indication that instead of coming to the heel strike and foot flat, you're sort of bypassing the heel strike and your ankle isn't maybe mobile enough. And you're not able to pull it all the way up. And your foot's not clearing what you're going over. Which is what makes it a risk factor for people when they're older. And why we don't want to see things like shuffling down. Because it increases your risk of tripping and slipping, twisting your ankle, breaking a hip. It ends up going into a bigger set of characteristics. Other ones? Sometimes you'll see someone take a step and then their hip will drop out. So they'll step on their right foot, but then their hip will sort of drop to the right. And if we imagined, I don't know if you know who Jessica Rabbit is. This cartoon from the 90s...
JEANNETTE: Yes. Yes.
KATY: ...you know, who had this sort of…
JEANNETTE: Sashay
KATY: …sashay - you know, like that hips going side to side. Well, if I actually saw something like that clinically, then I would know that the lateral hip, the musculature on the lateral hip, when you're stepping on the right side and your right hip's dropping out to the right, that the musculature on the right isn't coming in when that foot lands. This lateral hip is supposed to then switch on and help that stance leg carry into the step. But a part of your body is not going forward with you. Instead, that hip is now dropping unsupported off to the right hand side. Now I just want to pause here and say the thing about gait is there's no one single way to walk all of the time.
KATY: So gait really is based on the environments that you are in. And I bring it up for this hip issue because when you're walking downhill ... Let's say you're going down a steep hill, that ability to step on your right leg and let your hip drop off to the right can help you in a going downhill situation. I mean, you want it to be supported. You want your hip to be controlling that sideways motion. So it's not to say we never want the hip to go out to the right or to the left. But if I see that on flat, overground walking, then that's going to be something that I would want to point out to someone to be able to see it. And then just a couple more things, a torso, really leaning forward substantially, not just a little bit, but really out in front of the hips.And I'm actually pausing there because there's someone who's an older gentleman who walks around town who has extreme hyperkyphosis, you know, to the point where the torso is, I'm just trying to measure right now, more than 45 degrees curled. I mean, it's severe. And his accommodation is to rest his elbow in his abdomen and put his chin on his hand...
JEANNETTE: Wow.
KATY: ...to support himself. Very much like if you've ever had a shelf that goes against a bracket.
JEANNETTE: It's a bracket.
KATY: He's making a bracket to support himself. And he walks everywhere. And his accommodation in his gait is to bring in this one arm. And he holds himself up in that position and then proceeds.
JEANNETTE: He can keep going in that with that compensation.
KATY: But he couldn't without it. You know, the weight of the upper spine, the lower spine would be so severe that I don't think locomotion would be possible. But he's figured out this. So gait patterns are a lot like this for all of us where there's some thing that's arisen, some torque or turn, you know, whether it's through injury or acquired through just the way we learn how to walk. And then we develop some, maybe not as extreme as having to bring our arm out in front of us, but it's still there. There's some sort of physical shift of a body part, whether it's skeletal. Whether it's through muscle contraction or using connective tissue to brace or tense a particular area so that you can continue to move from point A to point B. Because overall, we're going to locomote. And then we're just, we're really malleable in our patterns. Which is so great. Which isn't to say that, you know, for this gentleman, I'm sure there's already a set of issues that are connected to his own spine and also probably to the arm and the way that he's accommodated.
JEANNETTE: Yeah. Especially if he's only using one. Right?
KATY: Yeah. I'm always checking to see, you know, from a distance. But it would be someone that I would love to work with.
JEANNETTE: I wonder if this point is just worth clarifying that there are some gait patterns that you see that are really a result of something underlying like cerebral palsy or Parkinson's and where you see these very, very characteristic gaits. But then what you alluded to is that we probably all have these slight deviations, compensations that arise. And I always think it's interesting. I wonder if this is partly why the original respondent to your Facebook post bristled. Because when we define something as normal, people then think you mean somebody's abnormal.
KATY: Yeah.
JEANNETTE: And that's, that's a hard thing. But I think it's worthwhile sort of separating. There are some things that people are dealing with medically that can result in these gait abnormalities. But then there's also this grade, so this sort of like continuous, I would say, like we probably all have something that's not quite ideal. And you've been talking about both of those things.
KATY: Yeah. I mean, your gait pattern can be affected by so many things. Certainly neurology is a big deal when it comes to gait patterning. It's very tricky because people will definitely have, let's say osteoarthritis. There's gait changes that come with osteoarthritis. But there were also gait patterns that can be associated with the development of certain things. And I think that understanding that is really helpful. Because we do just sort of get into like, well, I have arthritis in that part and I'm walking in this particular way. But if you would roll back the tapes to look at gait over time, you would see, well, there are some things that I see in gait that would actually be part of why there would be such heavy loads in that area in the first place. So yeah, it's very tricky to know what comes first. Certainly there are some clinical disorders, you know, where they start so early that they're just part of it. But even then, gait therapy and working with a physiotherapist is still really not off the table. There's a lot of - where we're shaped. Even by our positioning in the womb, for example, can be a part of what happens with the knees. But it's like, well, if you want, you got to get up and move around a lot on those limbs, you know, so they can have a different load and straighten out over time. I was thinking about bowleg in this particular position as I was speaking about that. And then I also think that we don't usually put this in gait pattern language. It goes more into movement volume. But I do think that the volume that we walk, or more importantly, don't walk, is also a big part of why we have the gait pattern that we have.
JEANNETTE: That we do.
KATY: Yeah. And this goes back to wildlife studies.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: I just can't imagine and I'm fortunate to get to work with a lot of wildlife biologists here and that involves a lot of tracking of animals. There's a lot of ways to track an animal. You can use a radio collar and see, oh, it went from this location to that location. And you can know the distance and you can sort of have a map of the movement that was happening. But a big part of wildlife biology is recognizing track and sign. So you're actually looking at, okay, I can see the rate of speed of this animal because it's leaving behind a certain set of footprints, which is part of how we know it was moving at this way of moving. Every animal has a baseline rate of travel, like a way that's the most efficient for them to cover along.
JEANNETTE: Yes, yes. Large distances.
KATY: Yes, long distances, right. And if you had all of these animals suddenly develop a cart on wheels, you know, that got it to another position or something else that were allowing animals to move very far distances without articulating their limbs, you would see a major influence on the way that those animals would function physiologically. I mean, that's what's happening to humans right now.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: I like all my units to be the same. I do not like having conversations where you're not putting everything into the same unit. So this is just like another further attempt for me to say, I'm trying to keep everything in the same unit. We have a movement issue. And our gait patterns are very much, again, they're related to these other big animal population habits that we have, which are like moving ourselves around in boxes on wheels.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: Primarily with this, you know, natural gait ... It's really hard to have a conversation about natural gait when movement itself is no longer natural in people's minds. But it is. If you were puzzling over your wolves, or your cougars, and you didn't want to talk about the fact that they were all moving around in boxes on wheels, I would find that very strange. And I just find that equally strange when we're having conversations about gait disorders and what natural is, you know, as far as how a human should move through their limbs. Because I think that, for the most part, if you were looking at hunter gatherers, you would see that there's going to be variety within gait.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: But you're still going to have a pretty similar template. And you would not see big gait pathologies.
JEANNETTE: Okay, so I have questions for you.
KATY: Okay.
JEANNETTE: Well, the first thing that's coming up, definitely for me, is thinking,it's very difficult to look at research done on humans, modern humans, and extrapolate what is the right way to walk when we're missing that unit of the fact that we're in our boxes. So it kind of calls into question, you know, how much we can interpret from that. So I'm going to put that aside.
JEANNETTE: We've got lots of research, but some of it's hard, because we're missing that bigger picture of the fact that humans aren't walking the distances that we evolved to walk. So my second question is, I have not seen any research on hunter gatherer gait. I have seen some very old work looking at more foot position in gait. Philip Hoffman, if you remember, he looked at unshod versus shod populations...
KATY: Right
JEANNETTE: ... rather than hunter gatherer populations versus urbanites. So is that something that you've come across?
KATY: So no, I don't think anyone ... Well, there is a paper, there's an anthropology paper that I have not been able to get access to, I imagine looking at gait variations in different populations around the world. It sort of reminded me from what I could read about it, similar to Gordon Hughes, looking at different resting positions.
JEANNETTE: Hmmm. Right. Yes.
KATY: Although I think it was a paper pulling in a logical research: notations that had been made, missionary, tracking of information. So I don't know. It's not going to be modern gait analysis.
JEANNETTE: Right. Okay. Yeah.
KATY: But, I looked at a lot of footage of hunter gatherer ... I mean, and again, it's probably anthropological video, just to try to put my own eyes on, usually feet. This was back when people were really asking a lot about, you know, gait running, heel strike and, you know, do I land on the front of my foot or the rear of my foot? And there's quite a bit of video footage now of just people on different tours and who are taking footage everywhere all the time where you could see, well, I can see that there are - in running 0 you can see that some people land on the front of their foot. Some people land on their heel. There's some still preference there.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: I've looked at video of head carrying. Head carrying is another - I mean, that's a gait.
JEANNETTE: Yeah.
KATY: I mean, we haven't even tested it.
JEANNETTE: It's loaded. Yeah.
KATY: It's loaded walking as is a lot of walking for humans. You know, if we go back to hunter gatherer cultures, it's almost always loaded...
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: ...walking. There's not a lot of walking. That's when I put in My Perfect Movement Plan. That's why carrying is so close to the bottom of the movement pyramid.
JEANNETTE: Pyramid. Yes.
KATY: Because the physical structure while it is doing these gait patterns is used to being under some sort of load. Unloaded walking would not be the primary condition or context for walking.
JEANNETTE: Yeah. Interesting.
KATY: But I can see a lot more symmetry when looking at these videos. And I think it has to do with, we're not talking about fitness or exercise walking, right? One of the reasons I teach gait in the way that I do, and also the reason for these gait parameters that I listed for before about how the heel needs to move through in the legs - it's more informed by anatomical shape...
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: ...than it is trying to match what another person is doing elsewhere. It's to say the ankle only articulates in this particular way. So, if the whole foot - if the ankle doesn't articulate, then the whole thigh would have to rotate to be able to accommodate for this ankle that isn't articulate. And so, I think with these gait parameters, it's trying to maximize the use of basic anatomical shape and force production that's coming from the musculature as well. It's trying to optimize leverage. To me, that's what efficiency is. Right?
JEANNETTE: Yes. Right.
KATY: It's making sure that you're utilizing the parts of the body that would most efficiently deal with that type of movement.
JEANNETTE: Yeah. I love that. As I was thinking about this episode, I was like, how could we start to untangle that question of the right way to walk? And efficiency was right there. I was thinking efficiency; the economy of how you move and balance and stability. Those have to be the things that create the gait that you want. It's got to be economical, efficient, stable. And if we could start to...
KATY: It's all the things that you're trying to get from your car. I think it's just that. It's really tricky to talk about gait efficiency to a group of people that does not require efficient gait.
JEANNETTE: True.
KATY: And I think that that's where we're being derailed in this conversation. But for these populations of humans right now who live in the modern world, who depend on their physical structure for life, it's much more important. And therefore you see it's much more intact.
JEANNETTE: Right. And I'm just thinking of an example here when we would look at walking as like a fitness walking. We talked about this with arm swing in the Hiking Poles episode, when we've got the arms going out in front, which is not an efficient way to carry your body over a long distance. You really want your arms to be helping you go behind you and swing those arms to balance the movement of the spine and the movement of the opposite leg.
KATY: Or carry your load.
JEANNETTE: Or carry your load.
JEANNETTE: Doing something else more functional. So yes, we have such a different perspective, I guess is what I'm trying to say. So Katy, I think what we're talking about is essentially efficient, stable movement. So I think there were a few things that an efficient gait requires. And the first thing would be stability, like support of the body weight, particularly when you're on one leg in that swing phase. You've got to stabilize on that one leg. And you alluded to this earlier on when you were talking about the hips sashaying, that would be a sign when those muscles aren't supporting you as well. And arm swing ...
KATY: Right.
JEANNETTE: ...to support the spine. And then we've also got to get clearance in swing, which we alluded to with the hitting your toes. So what do we need for clearance?
KATY: Well there's two things. I mean, you essentially need to get your foot, the front of your foot, higher than the back of your foot. And then you also need to ... you can only pull your toes up as far ... I mean, if you stand. Lift your toes up as close to your shin as possible. It's called dorsiflexion.
JEANNETTE: I'm doing this as I sit.
KATY: And I'm doing it as I stand. So there's that distance that you can go.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: So if you look down, you can see, okay, my toes are two inches off the ground, three inches off the ground, six centimeters off the ground, whatever it is. You also can clear your toes or lift your toes away from the ground by pushing on your stance leg. So not the toes that you're lifting, but your other leg pushes down into the ground. And then that gives you, I mean, it depends on the strength of your hip and the weight of your hip, but that can lift you up even farther than just lifting at the ankle can. And this is about lifting your foot and giving the space for the leg to swing. So the less hip strength you have, the less ability to stand on a single leg, the less ankle mobility you have, the closer your foot sort of sits to the ground when you're walking. And so these are lateral hip strength. So you can go try the pelvic list exercise on the website. Because this is such a foundational exercise that deals with not only hiking the foot up, but also hugging the hip in - hugging a laterally sideways drifting hip, hugging it in to the body. And then you're able to clear your foot as it swings.
JEANNETTE: And that pelvic list really does both one and two. It's your stability on that standing leg and it's the clearance. Okay, great. And we can link to pelvic list. You have lots of resources on that.
KATY: Yeah.
JEANNETTE: I also had this idea of smooth transitions. I'm sure everyone knows, if you look at someone who's just moving smoothly rather than jerky or variable steps, like people that take different stride lengths and it can be a very sort of staccato gait. So we want that smooth transitions. I don't know if you've got anything specific for that, but I think that comes together with the other pieces.
KATY: It is. I mean, I can break them all down individually, but ultimately they're a fine orchestrated process. We can say stance phase and swing phase, but both are in the opposing phase. And so it's this dance of when one leg... So if you don't have a flight phase, it means that there's always one foot on the ground, but there's also this period of time where there's two feet on the ground. But you are moving forward.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: And that hand off of one leg being the support to the other leg being support that's mobility. So now we're looking at IT band again with lateral hip. Not strength in this case, but flexibility. What's the mobility of my hip coordination to ...? When you're really wobbly through the foot and ankle and you're having to hand off, it's sort of, you could throw the ball to the other hand, and I think a lot of times there's not a lot of coordination between the right and left side. So it is much more tossing a ball from one hand to the other versus passing it off and accepting it in this way that's not jarring to the rest of the system.
JEANNETTE: Interesting. And I did read somewhere that certainly in the older population, more time in the double leg stance, almost like a stop, is a risk for falling.
KATY: Yes.
JEANNETTE: It's an inefficient gait when you haven't got that ability to rapidly, as you're moving past the baton to the other leg. So yeah, but I love that analogy. So I have a couple more. I'm just looking at my notes here. Adequate step length. So if you've got very short, you're almost getting to that shuffling stage. So for an efficient gait, you need this adequately long stride length. And that I think, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is probably most determined by hip mobility. So the ability to extend the trailing leg and flex the leading leg. And any limit to that would potentially ... or you'd have to compensate.
KATY: You do. So for sure, hip extension is a big limiter. But so is ankle. Dorsiflexion too is also a big reason why someone might have to. Like you could have all of the hip extension in the world, but if you don't have dorsiflexion, your stop ends. So it could be that. And then also it can be non-mechanical. One of the big reasons that people start to shorten their stride is a lack of balance.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: They don't have the strength on one leg, right? So if you don't have the ability to stand on one leg well, then the single leg portion of gait is a very vulnerable time for you. So you'll naturally get your foot down, the next foot on the ground sooner. So then you've got these short kind of staccato steps. And then also psychologically. If you've ever walked on something very slippery, so ice is the main thing that's coming up for me right now, there's a lot of natural things we do to make ourselves safer in those situations. You'll slightly bend your knee, bring your center of mass down, turn your feet out, open your base of support, spread your legs wide a little bit, further increase your base of support and then take teeny tiny steps where your foot never really leaves the ground. That's the most - it's the least risky. It's the least risky of all the ways of walking. Ultimately though, it itself becomes its own hazard. So if you have a fear of falling, either you've had a fall before or you're just very concerned about having a fall, you go through all those changes that I just said happen to the ice. You will induce this way of walking and it basically is its own risk factor for falling now. The fear of falling itself is a risk factor for falling, which I describe a lot in dynamic aging.And that's why I spend so much time teaching that single leg strength. I want people to feel so powerful on their single leg and also toe mobility. The ability to really spread and grip the floor. Traction, you got four wheel drive on. That's much better when it comes to walking.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: And then also one more non-mechanical thing, because I think we sort of chalk everything up to like, it's my tight hips, your shoes that you are wearing. If you're wearing those slip on shoes. Have you ever seen a kid come out in their parents' shoes? And they're sort of like shuffling. It's very cute. And they're shuffling and they're awkward walking. I see that phenomenon in grown people all the time. Usually women usually walking on shoes. And I'm not talking about stiletto, high heels. I'm talking about maybe one or two inch chunky heel. It's thick and their foot is sort of drooping over the side of this shoe. And the shoe doesn't attach. And they're just sort of walking across the parking lot, walking into church, walking out to dinner. And they're so wobbly and risky on these shoes that they're in these tiny steps and sort of shuffling to hold these shoes. And I just always think - I wonder if you knew that that shoe was really increasing your pathological gait. Putting that shoe on is a big part of the motor pattern that you are creating for the rest of the day and it sort of capped the ability to generate any sort of strength while you're walking if you would wear it still. And I don't want to take away from the beauty of your outfit, but I can see the problem of it. It's so clear as day to me. Just as that toddler walking out on those giant shoes, I'm like, your hips are sort of all stiff, you know, and you're just sliding your feet on the, trying to keep it on and it's so clear to me.
JEANNETTE: Yeah. I do think there's some people that would always choose to go with the cute shoes, but I think if people really understood.
KATY: Yeah. Save your cute shoes. And I certainly don't know what they're doing the rest of the time, but you know, I can see the drop of the hip to the right and the left.
JEANNETTE: And I think you get used to things. You get used to struggling through because you don't see the alternative.
KATY: Oh yeah.
JEANNETTE: Yeah.
KATY: And you're not going to kick off your shoes and feel better. That's the issue.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: You know, there's, there's a lot of strength training that is needing to replace, you know?
JEANNETTE: I mean, I think certainly in my shoe journey, I mean, I haven't worn anything but a barefoot shoe since probably 2010, but I have very wide feet. And I think for decades I was in shoes that were always too tight for me. But it was like the noise just didn't get through because it was so normal.
KATY: Yeah.
JEANNETTE: So I think you just - this is what you do. You struggle through.
KATY: Well, and this is just to say stride length is a big part of this gait that we want to see because shorter strides are connected with so many other things. So maybe your shoes is part of it. Maybe your tight hip flexors is part of it. Maybe.
JEANNETTE: Yeah. The other day when I just needed to go out and it was wet and I put my husband's Wellington boots on.
KATY: Yes.
JEANNETTE: I was like, oh my goodness. They're so big and heavy and I was shuffling. And it does make you realize, oh my goodness, it completely in an instant, it just changes how you operate.
KATY: Yeah.
JEANNETTE: So that's a really good point, which we haven't mentioned so far. I had just had a couple of other things: asymmetry you mentioned earlier, because that's obviously going to be an inefficient ... If you're doing one thing with one leg and it's slightly different with the other, you're going to have to compensate. And I know this certainly in myself, when I watch myself walk on sand, my right foot likes to turn out more. It's my tighter foot. It's my tighter hip. So I obviously have to do something to compensate for the fact that one foot likes to point out slightly more than the other. And I imagine that's in lots of people's experience.
KATY: Well the ground's probably, the fixed ground probably compensates it for you.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: It's only on sand where the ground doesn't connect to itself.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: So it can't hold those for you. And I do want to say something about gait in the sense of like, I don't think that we need to worry about our gait, all of the details, especially in the absence of any issue.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: You know, like this is really about, like one of the signs of gait issues would be, I can't walk comfortably.
JEANNETTE: Or I hurt after walking a long period of time.
KATY: Right. That was the other one I was trying to formulate in my mind. Because sometimes you're so not used to correlating what you feel in your non-walking parts. Maybe someone wouldn't think between their shoulder blades as a piece that might hurt. So yeah, anytime where you can sort of begin to paint the picture of the loads that I'm creating through walking. They're not sustainable in some way. You know, they're making it so they're not regenerative. Walking should be one of those things that you're practicing so that you're able to walk more, not something that affects you to the point where you can't then take a walk.
JEANNETTE: Right.
JEANNETTE: I think sometimes though, it's hard, isn't it, to know how do you correlate something that maybe you don't see is connected to your gait? That's the only thing I have Because sometimes, you know, if it's your ankle, okay, I've walked too many miles. But when it's somewhere further away and not so directly connected, it's harder to see whether your gait pattern could do with some tweaking.
KATY: Well, let's talk about that concept of tweaking. I would recommend having someone film you walk. Film you from behind. Film you from the front. And film you from the side. From behind is easiest when you're walking with somebody. Right? Because you can just...
JEANNETTE: And don't wear black trousers. Wear something light.
KATY: Yes, right, right. And probably it would be better to ask someone to film you when you're not as aware of it. Because the walking pattern that you will develop knowing that you are being analyzed is going to be different than maybe the walking pattern that you would be doing if you're just listening to a podcast - maybe this podcast - as you're walking around.
JEANNETTE: Because I've done this for myself and for others, I think it's worthwhile as well. You want to be at a pace that you normally do. Because if you're doing it in a studio you're just not going to pick up those kind of your normal most efficient speed. So doing it, getting someone to do it when they're out walking and you're able to go that normal regular speed is useful too.
KATY: Those are all really helpful ways to pick up basic things like symmetry. Going, I'm not really sure what I should be looking at, but I can see one of my legs is sort of, from behind when it bends, is cutting in a diagonal. Or maybe you do something like kick your own leg while walking. That's a big one coming in. Then you'll be aware of, okay, my foot's having a hard time clearing this space. And so I'm having to bring it into the side because I know I'm not using that hip as much as I am using on the opposite side. Or you can use sound, you know, listening to yourself. Like are you shuffling? Are you shuffling on one leg versus the other?I'm trying to give anything other symmetry things. I just did a podcast. And the guy I was doing a podcast with was like, I see people walking and it's, I feel like a lot of people are creating movements that are not going in the direction of their walk.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: And so I was like, yes, you've really picked up on why are my arms going to the right and to the left?
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: Why is only one arm swinging? Why is my other arm just dangling by my side? You know, there's a lot of...
KATY: Toe walking. These just go into our gait abnormalities. You know, there is an accent to gait. Just like there are accents to us walking. And you know, our gaits are informed by our genetics in the sense of your anthropometric dimensions - your limb length, how long, how wide your foot is. How long your legs are? And then they are informed by the way people walked around us as we were growing up. You know, so again, in that same way that you learn how to talk. You have an accent. Did you know you had an accent?
JEANNETTE: Yes. Yeah.
KATY: Everyone's got an accent. But your pattern of talking really ends up matching the people around you. You're matching those movements. And then there's injury, personality, you know, all these things that come into walking. And I don't think we would call anything that, you know, like I wouldn't call anything an abnormality. But not seeing one of those points that we assess gait by, I would call that an abnormality.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: Like if you have an extra bouncy walk. Now, if you had an extra bouncy walk and you had back pain, then I might really want to tune in to where that bounce was coming from and why it was. And I might see, oh, this extra sort of upward, there's not a lot of need for upward motion in walking. In running, yes, because it's flight phase.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: Right? So you're trying to create lift so that you can, you know, kind of conserve some of the musculature that you would have to do in overground, slower walking. But I might see like, oh, this springy walk here is happening in lieu of hip extension.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: Even in gait. You're sort of trying to heave ho and go up.
JEANNETTE: Trying to fling yourself up.
KATY: Right. And so let's see what happens if, you know ... It's very tricky to work on your walk. That's why I wouldn't really work on it until you're motivated, usually through something ... not feeling good. Like that's just when the priority shifts for you. And you're like, okay, now I'm interested in where my knee is when I'm walking.
JEANNETTE: If you're able to hike up 10 mile hikes with no ill effects, then this doesn't need to be your priority to start analyzing your gait.
KATY: No.
JEANNETTE: Hmm.
JEANNETTE: Right. Yeah. Okay. So speaking about abnormal gaits, we had two questions from our listeners on race walking. So I will read them and then we can see what we think. So this is another question for gait. Race walking thoughts, questions. Since the rules are, it needs to look like walking rather than actually be walking, it seems like it is not really good for your body (question mark). The requirement is essentially heel striking as fast as possible. And when I watch people move, they are also moving their pelvis more to get greater stride lengths. And I'm not sure if this is a good thing. Maybe what I'm getting at is that at a certain speed, shouldn't our gait adapt to jog/run rather than try to enforce a certain gait or illusion of that gait since most do actually have both feet off the ground, though to the human eye, it still looks like walking, when this is not appropriate for the speed. Watching footage, pun intended, I just had some deep feelings of this doesn't look right. I'm ready to be told otherwise if you think so. And the second question is much more succinct. It's just I'm watching the Olympics and discovered race walking. Can you please comment on the biomechanics happening there? Would love your take because I'm like eyes wide open emoji.
KATY: Is that the first time that they've seen race walking?
JEANNETTE: I have no idea. It's been around for decades. I mean, yeah, I remember killing myself as a child watching the race walking.
KATY: Biomechanics Professor Dr. William Whiting, he used to pretend speed ... like that was his reward for us was to mimic speed race walking just because it's such a butt wiggly. This whole thing in it. So actually, there is no flight phase in race walking. Not even one that is imperceptible to the eye. Because they have sensors in their shoes to keep them honest. And so they always have to have those sensors loaded. So it's a kind of a high tech sport now. I imagine that the sensors came on because of cheating. It's like, let me add a little imperceptible hop hop hop.
JEANNETTE: Because I think there's footage that I looked at when thinking about this question. And you could see that in some people that were disqualified when they got them on the camera. So it used to be, I think, that it was just because you just had judges that were watching. And if it was imperceptible, it was imperceptible. But now that's interesting. They actually have the technology to determine that.
KATY: I'm looking at when were they introduced - sensors. The use of electronic chip insoles in race walking competitions was proposed to begin in 2021.
JEANNETTE: But recent, recent though.
KATY: Yeah, yeah.
JEANNETTE: Probably recent. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. Because I guess they, like anything, they're pushing it to the wire.
KATY: And so it is walking. It is not running. But it is not the form that you would use for those pieces. You're not looking at natural walking. You're looking at a set of parameters that someone has to maintain while going as quickly as possible. So yes, like when you start to go to a faster speed, your body has all these natural things of shortening up your arms, adding the hot face. Right? Because back to this efficiency. At this point, it is easier for the body to transition into a different set of shapes to accomplish moving fast. But you're not trying to accomplish moving fast. You're trying to walk. You're trying to move within these constraints, these rules. And that's why it looks abnormal. Because you know it's not supposed to look like that. No one has to be trained to be like, I don't know what I'm looking at but that is not...
JEANNETTE: It's just weird.
KATY: It's not the right - my body shouldn't be doing that. You've got a lot of natural understanding with sort of how things like shorten up, you know, and your knees bend a little bit more. And here they are trying to keep the legs extra straight.
JEANNETTE: That's right. Because that's the second rule that they have. It's not only that they have to be walking. But also, the leg has to be fully extended when contact is made. And then you have to keep that leg straight until you're into the next stride. So they all look like they're locking or hyperextending their knees. I don't know why that rule, but anyway. So that's why they have to move in this very odd way of getting lots and lots of pelvic motion in the up and down and rotation to try and get some stride length within going very, very, very short ...
KATY: Within these constraints.
JEANNETTE: ...constraints of these very short steps, fast steps. And then their arms do something funny as well, which I was thinking might be because they have so much pelvic rotation that their arms kind of come across the body a little bit, not fully just to about kind of center of the chest. So they kind of do this.
KATY: They do increase their thoracic rotation.
JEANNETTE: Rotation. And I wondered if that was to compensate for the pelvic motion. But the form is all about speed. It's not for efficient, smooth gait. I think.
KATY: No. It's a ... human's come up with the weirdest things to do. I mean, when I look at that, I'm like, why?
JEANNETTE: Dude what?
KATY: I can see throwing something really heavy, really far. I can see trying to run as far as you can. Try to run as fast as you can. But the idea of trying to walk as fast as you can, I feel like you lost the plot there.
JEANNETTE: Well, I think that the listener's question was, yes, at some point they should have gone to a jog and they didn't. So they've done all these funky things.
KATY: No, the sport is you can't go to a jog and you have to go as fast as you can.
JEANNETTE: This is no disrespect for people that do it.
KATY: Oh no, no. When I said you lost the plot back then, I didn't mean YOU for choosing the sport. But just the stuff that we come up with. And then someone else would be like, I see myself in that. I must, I mean, there's going to be people who are drawn to that sport. I mean, it's just like bungee jumping.
JEANNETTE: I'm not sure how you get into it, but there are, yeah. So definitely in the not normal, natural gait category.
KATY: No, no. Do we answer all the questions there?
JEANNETTE: I think so, yeah. The other one was just...
KATY: Is it really good for your body? I mean, there's going to be injuries associated with it. I don't know doing any Olympic sport that would not have, you know, when you're training at that level. Now, this one seems to be asking your body to do, it's like, it's why I set it aside from like throwing something as far as you can or as hard as you can. It seems like this particular sport is really all about keeping your body from doing the natural thing.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: The natural way to make it easier or smoother on your joints.
JEANNETTE: Yes. I think that's right. I can't think of another sport that...
KATY: Where you're restraining your, you know, where you're...
JEANNETTE: Yes. Yeah.
KATY: Yeah. There's no other sport like that, is there? So that's why it seems such an outlying one where it's not, yeah, you're trying, I guess you're always trying to avoid transitioning. I mean, I guess sometimes your body just naturally wants to stop. You'd be like, what would be best for me is not running any farther, you know? But you push past that. So there's a psych game always in every sport. So there's definitely a psych game in race walking, but it seems unique to me in that...
JEANNETTE: You're not taking a natural kind of movement and pushing yourself to get faster...
KATY: Right.
JEANNETTE: ...in quite, yeah.
KATY: I mean, you are trying to walk as fast as you can.
JEANNETTE: True. True. True.
KATY: I feel like we humans have a way to deal with increasing speeds and it is not walking.
JEANNETTE: It's not that. Yes.
KATY: It's like, oh no, when you go faster, you just transition over to this different move. Like, can you imagine a horse saying like, you have to canter, but I need you to go at a galloping speed while you canter. Like the way that it would really create a lot of tension and an extra work at the joints that wouldn't be there. It just seems like you're mixing things up. But this is art. I mean, I don't really see a big difference between art and sports at this level. Like you're just trying to create a shape that didn't exist before and your performance art, there's an element to it. So it's all the same. It's just humans do really interesting things.
JEANNETTE: That's right. Yeah. Good questions though. So can we loop back to where we started?
KATY: Yeah.
JEANNETTE: Did we answer, is there a right way to walk?
KATY: What do you think? Do you think that there's a right way to walk?
JEANNETTE: I feel like I'm going to sit here saying maybe, maybe not. It's a very hard question. I think that I understand the responder to your original Facebook post that we're unique and there is an accent to our walking. But I also do think, and I think we instinctively see it. We see when there's something going wrong with someone's gait that is not good for some part of them. I think we can instinctively see that. So I think there are ways of moving more efficiently and we can also see that. I can see that when I look at people's gait. And I think most people can. So I would definitely say that we can look at those points that you gave us and can we generate an efficient, smooth, stable gait? And that's a better version of a walking pattern than one where we can see a significant deviation from that. So did I answer that or did I just hedge my bets?
KATY: Yeah, I'm not sure. What was your answer?
JEANNETTE: What was my answer? It was vague and fluffy.
KATY: That's good. Perfect for these times.
JEANNETTE: Yeah. Vague and fluffy.
KATY: Yeah. And I think it's easier to say there is a right way to walk than there isn't. I appreciate anatomical variation. I appreciate variation in ability. I appreciate variation in context. And at the same time, I think the way of evaluating movement that we laid out, those are very helpful to your physical experience throughout your lifetime. And I think when you're in a younger body, you might not appreciate discussions about longevity. And also that when we're talking about the right way to walk, I think it's also - it needs to be in the context of a movement diet overall.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: You know what I mean? Like, I guess how would we answer the question, is there a right way to eat? It would be nutrient oriented, right? You'd be like, well, here are the dietary nutrients that we know a body needs. Every single body doesn't need exactly all of them. Some people uptake them better, don't uptake them. But here's your nutrition book of the inputs that you need. And I think it's the same for movement, obviously. That's what I keep saying over and over and over again. And walking. There's a right way to walk. And also that right way has a volume and sits relative to other ways of moving as well. And ultimately, for me, it has a lot to do with the species as a whole. You know, I think the context in which I'm trying to answer this question is really no different than the wolf. What does the wolf need in this space to do well for a long period of time? It's going to relate to its physicality. What can it eat? How far can it roam? Can it mate? All of these things. And I do not think it's different for humans. I think that we have a lot more narrative around the humans and what they need that are very much culturally, societally, influenced. We have such a hard time looking at humans outside of a cultural context and in a biological context. And again, I see humans struggling - struggling physically in a time where they've never had more support, literally, just physically moving. Their limb work being done by everything but themselves. And also, should something go wrong…
JEANNETTE: Lot's of medical support.
KATY: ...so much medical support that's available from pharmaceutical to joint replacements. You know what I mean? Never has the infrastructure to support the physical needs of a human been bigger. And I see gait patterns worsening. I see the number of people with gait issues increasing, the number of people who can't move increasing. And I see that like, what would a wildlife biologist say? Oh, this is a terrible environment for this animal.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: And it's not able to, you know, it's not lubricating its joints. It's not able to do these basic things. And so I do think that I would stand by the idea that there is a right way to walk. Because I think ultimately we have to keep that in mind. That as a species, we're having big problems with locomotion. That's a huge deal.
JEANNETTE: Mmm. Right.
KATY: Like an animal can't locomote. For any other animal, it would be much more ... imagine fish that couldn't swim.
JEANNETTE: Yeah, absolutely.
KATY: Or worms that couldn't writhe. And how much of the work that's being done by them is based on these locomotion patterns. But I also do think that there's a right way to move. And I think that it's a much smaller set of parameters to make it right. The envelope of what is the right way to move is quite big.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: It's really making sure these smaller boxes are ticked. Like the big toe can extend to this certain amount. And if we don't see that, then some other hinge has got to move.
JEANNETTE: It's got to give. Right.
KATY: Hopefully this was interesting to other people.
JEANNETTE: I know. Gait, as I've discovered, is very complicated. And that's what I love about what you've set out is that there are some simple things that you can look for. Because this could be a kind of 10 hour episode about gait mechanics, but everyone would leave.
KATY: Yeah. Yeah, they'd walk. They'd walk away.
JEANNETTE: They'd walk away. So hopefully we've given them...
KATY: Sorry. Well, I wanted people to have food for thought. I think about this question a lot. And I do think reevaluating your relationship with walking is important. It's an important thing to prioritize. I don't think we think about our relationship to walking. You know, it's general physical activity. And I'm talking really specifically about how are your hinges performing the act of walking? I think it's something, especially if you've noticed that that relationship isn't great between you and walking, to break it down part by part.
JEANNETTE: Brilliant. Thanks, KATY.
KATY: Thank you. I'll see you soon.
JEANNETTE: Okay, everyone, just a reminder, if you have questions, please send them to podcast@nutritiousmovement.com.
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JEANNETTE: And if you have enjoyed the podcast, please like or follow wherever you like to listen to audio. And we will see you next time.
KATY: Bye.
JEANNETTE: Bye.
Hi, my name is Karla from Croatia. This has been Move Your DNA with Katy Bowman, a podcast about movement. We hope you find the general information in this podcast informative and helpful, but it is not intended to replace medical advice and should not be used as such. Our theme music was performed by Dan MacCormack. This podcast is produced by Brooke Armstrong and is transcribed by Annette Yen. Make sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to audio and find out more about Katy, her books, and her movement programs at nutritiousmovement.com.
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