Free Fallin’

I haven't had time to write a post this week because I've got 28 Restorative Exercise™ Specialists here in WA doing a week of live training. We're all calf-stretched out. We're pelvic-floored out. We're all walked out. It is awesome, and tiring, and exciting.

Did I mention I'm going to Hawaii in two days. Well I am.

Ok, this is the end of my blog post. I hope you found it informative.

Just kidding.

To get a tidbit of biomechanical education out there for y'all, my lovely peeps filmed me this morning, doing a demonstration of the angular displacement caused by wearing a positive-heeled shoe.

Since I'm pretty sure you've already read my book (you've read the book, right?), then you're familiar with this graphic:

This graphic shows how the vertical column of the body is displaced with a heel (middle pic) and how you need to correct for the displacement to keep from pitching forward. But here's the thing: You're really not "correcting" it. Somewhere, in your body, the ankles, knees, pelvis and spine have made the corrections by reversing their function. So, even if you work really hard to be "vertical" in your positive-heeled shoes (i.e. engaging your core and squeezing your but), you're not "vertical" You've just moved your joints in the opposite direction from natural to straighten out that huge displacement. There is no possible way to fix your body while in positive-heeled shoes. The damage is ongoing and on the cellular level.

What determines how far forward you pitch is a basic trigonometry function (which I'm not going to do right now because we're just getting ready to take a big group hike) determined by:

1. The length of your foot between the ankle and the ball of the foot.

2. Your height.

3. The height of the heel.

You can watch the demo here. And, a warning: It ain't pretty.