DO WE KNOW HOW TO WALK ?

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 October 1928, Page 9

DO WE KNOW HOW TO WALK ?

“Foot-Faults” of Men and Women . • . The Right Methods and the Wrong ... FTER having served through the Stone Age, ~ the Bronze Age, and, in fact, every age since man descended from the trees, ■' ■ . . the, art of walking is ' said to have been lost in London and the big.'cities of the United Kingdom. Do New Zealanders know how to walk? Watch the passers-by on the streets and satisfy yourself that ninetenths of them have no idea whatever of locomotion in the manner decreed by Nature. They certainly get over the ground, but in most haphazard, laborious, unscientific manner. The graceful walk has fallen away before the motor, the tram and the railway.

Side-walks seem to develop splayfeet. The countryman may usually be distinguished by his action, his feet falling parallel probably because of the resistance which would be offered by long' grass to the splay feet. Quite three-quarters of the people in the cities walk with bent shoulders and chests hollow. Some . of the others lean backwards and advance the feet gingerly. Some splay the feet out at the angle beloved by sergeant-majors.

Others turn them in. A few walk with the feet parallel.

Many roll their bodies to the left on advancing to the left foot and to the right on advancing he right. In some the heel meets the ground first; in others, the toe; in others the whole foot touches ground together. Some swing permanently-bent legs, others permanently-stiff ones. THE RIGHT WAY In the accompanying pictures the right and wrong methods of walking are demonstrated. Here you have a wrong way of walking, the toes turned out at an angle as recommended by military authorities. If you are flat-footed, of course, you save the arches of the foot in this way. If you are normal, it is as wrong as if you walked with your toes in. Your legs have got three hinges, which we can call thigh hinge, knee hinge and ankle hinge. They are designed to open and close in a plane parallel to the direction in which you are going, like the hinged piston that turns the wheels of the locomotive. If you twist one hinge as you walk you also turn your body in the direction of the twist, or, in other words, you roll. You become ungainly. Walk with thigh, knee-cap and big toe in one line. It is in this way, after all, that a surgeon sets a broken

leg. GRACE BUT NOT EASE

Here you have the wrong way of setting down the foot. Walk with your toes touching first. Do you ’notice how “affected” your walk be-

comes. It makes the grace that the mannequin likes, but it is not that type of grace that is wedded to ease. Nature makes one toe-walk in this way when caution is necessary, when expecting a load to fall from the head —as witness the walk of some natives —when reaching out for the road from the pavement, when dodging another pedestrian, and even when playing Blind Man’s Buff. But it is the wrong walk for general walking over good and bad ground alike. Nor should the heel touch first. It is clumsy, tiring and wrong from every point of view. Whether you wear high heels or low, all the heel and sole should touch ground together, with the foot bent outwards by the merest shade.

One should put the weight forward as one walks, of course. And one should walk in a straight line. One should not look down, nor bend the back. The length of step should depend on the length of leg, a yard being about right for the six-foot man. AVOID A ROLL I think it is important to straighten the leg before it touches the ground. At all costs avoid a roll. If anything is moved out of the straight, muscles have to be used to get it back again, and that means fatigue. Before thinking out details, set yourself out to walk with a maximum of grace and a minimum of fatigue. The wrong way of walking is tiring, ugly, and may be bad for you. Graceful, easy walking in a pair- of com fortable shoes is a delight, and there are many who have never tasted it.