Parallel Feet: How far would this car go?
Human beings are not machines in the same way as cars, but we aren’t that dissimilar.
One distinction is that a car can’t adapt to a poor pattern the way a person can. If a car tire blows the car doesn’t go.
If an ankle sprains, the foot turns out and we compensate for the pain by changing the way we move until we heal.
And hopefully, we return to the original pattern after we heal (good luck with that).
I used to walk like a duck. And never thought twice about it.
My feet would splay open with each step and my legs would basically roll open at the hips. I can still imitate the movement but it is awful.
Believe me when I tell you that I am not the only person who walks that way. A whole swath of the population is too loose and they often walk with patterns similar to my old ones.
But, there are plenty of tight people out there as well.
Their patterns are usually different.
People with tight hips tend to walk with their feet turned out as well, but have knees that pull wide out to the side instead of having hips that roll open.
There are other bad ways to walk but those two patterns will suffice for now.
I walked the way I did because my family is way to loose for our own good.
Both my mother and father were loose jointed without knowing it, ultimately leading to a couple of rough finishes to otherwise wonderful lives.
People with tight hips walk they way they do because of similar inheritances.
The main point is that most people walk poorly with patterns they were gifted by DNA and genetics, and we don’t often think about the way we walk because walking is meant to happen under the radar of conscious thought.
Now, about the picture of the car with sad wheels. That car would not get far.
And even though we can get through a lifetime with feet splaying open with every step (plenty of people do), we would be very well served by getting our feet to walk a little more towards parallel.
They don’t need to be perfectly parallel but even a tiny adjustment towards the midline and towards parallel feet would allow for better weight transfer and distribution through the whole body.
There is a caveat though. Don’t just turn your feet in. The movement towards parallel feet has to come through an adjustment in the position of the pelvis.