The first thing you’ll want to do is remove your shoes so you are barefoot. It’s important in general and in this exercise specifically for the nerves in your feet to be able to feel and respond to the ground they are on. To demonstrate this importance, you can walk around on a hard surface for a while and see how it feels.
If you are a constant heel-striker, your feet and joints will probably start to hurt and respond negatively to this. If you are a forefoot striker, there should be no negative impact, just your feet feeling and adjusting to the surface you are on like they should be.
Heel-striking is actually just the effect of some other things we are doing (or not doing) with our bodies that lead to that type of strike. So what we need to do is look at the main drivers that affect our landing: the hips, knees, and ankles. What’s most likely causing this type of landing are the hips and knees being held too straight and the ankles are too tight.
So to avoid a heel-strike landing, we first should bend our knees a little bit more so our feet land under the body. Then, to avoid tripping over your toes, you should bend slightly at the hip. Lastly, relax the ankle so when you land towards the front of your foot, your heel can come down gently instead of being the first part to take impact.
With all that in mind, let’s try the exercise. Start by standing on one leg, and still barefoot of course! Now start walking from that position and evaluate yourself. Did you start by swinging your back leg forward and landing heel-first?
If you did, it’s okay because this is now natural for most people. Now from the same one-legged position, instead of just walking, first engage the muscles that will propel you forward.
Wait, what?
If that sounds like gibberish, think of which large muscles control our forward movement. If you’re not sure, it’s the glutes and hamstrings. So now, engage your glutes and hamstrings from the one-legged position again and what happens? It pushes you forward! Crazy isn’t it? I certainly thought so when I first experienced this drill.
Now that we have the forward motion propelling movement understood, how do we properly catch ourselves from falling and continuing the forward motion? Remember the ideas about how to land from the beginning of the article? Apply those ideas as you catch yourself from falling.
Notice how you just PLACED your foot down in the correct spot instead of SWINGING it. The former is considered walking “on top of your feet” and the latter is considered walking “behind your feet”. All the joints are relaxed and bent appropriately, your feet are landing under your center of mass, and your feet are planted in a strong position.
Congratulations, you have found your natural foot strike.
These ideas apply to walking and running alike so keep them in mind whenever you’re starting a movement and once it becomes more natural to you, movement becomes effortless and painless.
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