Walk Better Part II: Twist Your Torso

One of the big walking “problems” I see is people being a little stiff in their torso, i.e. they can’t rotate! Chubby Checker would be so sad to see it 🙁

This usually results from the back being too arched, and the lower ribs in front not being able to soften down. From this position, you can’t rotate. If you can’t rotate, your walking and breathing become inefficient, and things start to hurt after a while.

In the previous post, “free your arms,” I discussed the importance of letting your arms move freely. But this only truly happens if your torso can rotate freely, because your arms just hang off your torso (picture Ace Ventura after getting a bunch of darts in his arms. Do I have to show the gif again? Okay here it is, for your viewing pleasure.)

So how do you let your torso rotate?

First thing to do is exhale and let your lower front ribs soften down. Check out this video on how to do that.

Once you’ve established that, sense the area at the bottom of your sternum or breast bone, the bony part in the center of your ribcage (the purple area in the picture below).

This is called your “xyphoid process” which is a fancy name for the lowest tip of your sternum bone.

To allow more twist, once ribs are exhaled and softened down, visualize rotation from this point, the xyphoid process.

Essentially, your torso should rotate in the opposite direction of your pelvis. So, as the center of your chest turns to the right, your pant zipper should turn to the left, and vice versa.

For most people, it will be harder to keep your pant zipper to the left as your sternum turns to the right because our anatomy, our brains, and our environment makes it preferable for us to keep our pelvis facing to the right (pant zipper pointing to right) and we balance that by turning our chest and torso to the left (sternum facing left).

So we need to work a little harder to get our pelvis to the left and torso to the right!

In this “harder” position, with left pelvis rotation (zipper to the left) and right trunk rotation (sternum to the right), your left leg is back and your right leg is in front, and your left arm is forward and your right arm is back.

If you try to think to hard about all this, though, you’ll probably end up walking kinda slow and stiff, which is the opposite of what we want!

That’s too “think-y” and walking is not managed with thought. It’s a very natural process that we have to allow rather than force.

This is why focusing on softening ribs down with complete, long exhales and noticing rotation at the xyphoid process is more helpful- it’s enough information to remind your body what to do without overwhelming it.

PRO TIP: For extra walking correction that will really get things moving in the right direction, try listening to some upbeat music while you walk! This taps into your body’s natural inclination towards rhythm, and walking is a very rhythmic activity when it’s going well.

Make sure the music has a really clear beat that’s easy to find. For some reason “Adore You” by Harry Stiles seems to work well. But hey, if Harry’s not your thing, you do you, boo.

Even Better- try wearing one headphone, in just your left ear! This increases awareness of our left side and helps restore balance by enhancing the left push-off phase of walking (pelvis to left, torso to right, left leg and right arm back) that tends to be harder. Sounds weird, works well.

Next month I’ll cover the 3rd factor that you need to walk better- Look! Where you’re going, yes, but there’s so much that our vision does to clean up walking…Stay tuned to find out how!