Why walking?” was a question I heard often when I first began to develop the CoreWalking program. “Don’t we already know how to walk?” My standard response has always been that I have yet to meet anyone who was taught to walk as a baby. We stand up somewhere around our first birthday, more or less, take a couple of steps to wild cheers and are then left to our own devices.
There is a very specific design to the way we are supposed to walk. It involves the arms and legs alternating as we amble along with the legs equidistant under the pelvis. Each step is meant to be a spinal twist that rotates the vertebrae, works the core, and tones the surrounding organs. If we move correctly the body maintains and heals itself from the wear and tear of daily life. Why walking seems obvious to me.
Along with breathing and dying it is one of the few guarantees in life and if you learn to walk correctly it will make breathing and dying more pleasant. The way we eat, sleep, and move are all within our control and these three things go a long way to determining how we age. While exercise is obviously good for us the importance of doing it correctly can’t be understated.
There are too many people that think exercise, in and of itself, is good enough but while exercise done poorly might serve an aerobic purpose an argument can be made that exercising with poor movement patterns is as bad as not exercising at all. For the most part people exercise with same patterns that they use for walking unless you have been taught otherwise. Changing the way you walk can have a profound effect on your body with far reaching consequences. To age gracefully is a main theme here at CoreWalking and that is the best answer I have to the question, why walking?
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