If you suffer from walking or running pain, you’ve probably acquired some very damaging habits that you can easily correct.
My “almost daily” walk or run is one of my favourite pastimes, but it wasn’t always that way.
For years, I had to force myself to run or even walk two or three times a week because it usually took two or three days for the pain of shin splints and ankle strain to subside enough for me to do it all over again.
However, everything changed when I discovered how to walk and run “correctly”!
You see, I have flat feet. You, too, may have flat feet, but I’ll guarantee they cannot be flatter than mine. In fact, next to me, Daffy Duck has arches!
Anyway, after the obvious self-diagnosis that I suffered from flat feet, I finally got around to seeing a podiatrist who prescribed a pair of customized orthotics.
At first, the pain of running with orthotics was just as bad … but different … because it completely realigned my arches and lower kinetic chain, which altered how I walked and ran.
Orthotics proved to be a wonderful solution because it altered the way my foot hit the ground, and without even realizing it, I began to roll a little more off the outside of my foot.
But the problem I had with my orthotics was that I used them in my running shoes. Still, if I was walking around town in regular shoes, it seemed to send conflicting messages to my feet, which meant that just an hour of walking in a pair of casual shoes would result in pain.
Then I came across Chi Running and Chi Walking, a way of walking naturally that many of us have long forgotten. Learning Chi has transformed my life in many ways … but first and foremost, it put the joy back into walking and running. I no longer require orthotics, and I’m pain-free. In fact, for the past eight years, I have walked or run about 30 miles a week and not once have I experienced any walking or running injury whatsoever.
As Danny Dreyer, the foremost authority and author of ChiWalking and ChiRunning, rhetorically asked: Why don’t adults run like kids, with the same ease and joyfulness?
It’s because we forgot how.
Before shoes were invented, humankind would never heel strike when running because it’s unnatural. Heel striking causes a great deal of increased pressure on the heel, the foot, the knees and right up the kinetic chain.
When you learn to walk and run using the principles of chi, you will not only realign your entire body, but you’ll develop great posture and better balance. You will learn how to naturally engage your core while causing back and knee pain to virtually disappear, and not only that, but you’ll find that you can walk or run further and faster with far less effort.