Never Violate Walking: "Core Walking"

A Chapter from my upcoming book....."The Book on Movement, Vol 1"

You’re wondering what in the world does that mean? My answer, it means exactly what it says. It’s much easier to show you. I want you to find a doorway in your house or apartment and stand facing parallel to the wall that houses the door Archway. I want you to simply walk through the archway or door.

What happened? Hopefully you made it through the doorway. But how? Are you aware of all the moving parts of your body that took you to get through that door? What part of your body moved first?

Tried again. This time try to be in tune with what part of your body actually moves first to do the movement.

OK did you learn anything? Did you feel anything? It’s OK if you did not. But I can tell you one thing by walking through that door you Certainly did not violate walking.

As we talked this in earlier chapters about the fuse box, the motion for all walking starts at the core indoor fuse box. So, in order to walk through that door just follow your bellybutton; core walking. Your belly button turn hard left or right depending on how you were facing and you went through the door 1 foot after the other. Your Core made the absolute tightest circle possible to produce a perfect turn of your spine and pelvis and off he went not even once thinking about how to do it correctly.

So, what do I mean about violating walking? Because when I tell one of my clients or patients to do a rotary activity such as swinging a golf club or a baseball bat, the turn of the core is never as tight and is effortless as when I say walk through the door.

Why is this? We have been walking and moving on two legs since we are about one years old. This has become a natural movement of the body. The body does it subconsciously. When we begin to do a rotary sport of any type: tennis, golf, baseball, Etc. Back quick enough it was turn has gone away mostly because it is “coached“away. What I mean by that is coaching of how to do the sport has caused a negative effect on the natural movement of the body.

The body responds to certain commands that elicit a neuromuscular response. When we say the word “walk”, The body knows exactly what to do to elicit that response of a tight core Turn which then motorizes the lower extremity.

Let me give you an example of commands that would cause the opposite effect on the body. Sorry baseball coaches but I will pick on you. Anyone who is playing baseball has probably heard someone saying the phrase “squish the bug”. That phrase is supposed to get the body to make the tightest core turn to produce the greatest effective force on the baseball, because as the core turns the upper extremities comes along for the ride to hit the ball. The problem with this “teach” Is that the foot which would squish the bug is the furthest away from the area, which is the belly button during the activity. This command will not produce the tight circle that is needed and wanted. The word walk will produce that tight circle.

So basically every rotary sport has some degree of trunk emotion and a rotation which mimics walking. So if you violate how one walks by teaching something that does not produce to be tight rotary motion of the core, you are violating walking. The violation of walking will cause poor performance due Poor trunk control and coordination to produce the tightest circle possible.