For the last few weeks, I’ve been struggling with tight IT bands, or at least that’s what it seems. I’ve had some pain in the knees and tightness, which creeped up out of nowhere. I noticed yesterday that when I walk with my feet close together, I seem to put more pressure on the outside of my legs, where the IT band is located. So I look up about the width of a running stance, and I stumble on this article talking about proper stride length and stride width.
Then, while walking 1.5 miles to the gym this morning, I decided that I was going to randomly change up both the stride length and width. I would walk in zig zags, avoid cracks, reach out with my foot, and all of these things.
Basically, I was walking as if I would have been hiking on a forest trail.
I believe that we humans did not evolve to walk on straight flat stone surfaces. I believe we spent a lot of time walking on curvy uneven surfaces with lots of hurdles in the way. To walk or run with a consistent stride length and width may work on a completely straight flat surface, but if you make the path more organic, then you notice that you will naturally change your stride length and width to accommodate and to keep going.
So what I’m doing now is imagining that as I walk on the boring sidewalk, that I actually am on a hike in the woods — avoiding cracks, veering off to the grass occasionally, walking along the tightrope of a shadow, skipping side to side to avoid fallen leaves — and I feel reengaged with the world and not as if I’m just clodding forward.
Plus, it’s one heckuva workout.