Hi All,

From watching lots of women walk, the one thing I have discovered is that there are as many ways to walk as there are women. My thoughts on Walking...

If you use the male / female slider on the biomotionlab website, you can see that women tend to have their upper body tilted slightly back to compensate for the weight of their breasts. You can see this when sliding the male/female adjustment back and forth, as you move toward the female position, the upper body tilts backwards (use the rotate option to get a side view of the figure).

For everyone, to counterbalance the motion of the legs swinging, a portion of the body above the legs will also move. For men, the largest part of their body above the lets is their chest and shoulders, so men tend to rotate their shoulders as they walk. For women, the hips are the largest part of their body, and thus when women walk, they use their hips to balance the motion of the legs, and their shoulders tend to stay rather motionless. This is also visible in the biomotionlab website when the slider is moved. Thus, try to minimize the shoulder sway when walking.

I also like the motion study (a short video) at:

https://vimeo.com/69217700

With the added gridlines you can see the alignment of the shoulders with the hips (shoulders behind hips, body tilted backwards), thus demonstrating the tilt discussed previously. in this video you can also see that at the end of each stride, the rear leg is extended well back behind the body, the heel is low to the ground, and the knee is almost locked. Men tend to walk with more of a bent knee walk and do not keep their heel down near the end of the stride. The result of female leg positioning is that the hips must rotate back somewhat and drop down slightly on the side of the rear leg to allow this to occur. This hip pull back and slight drop is also visible in the biomotionlab website, as the hip motion is much more dynamic (as well all know). If you try this, and you may need to stretch first to loosen your body up, you can see that your hips will be pulled naturally back during the end portion of the stride, and then will recover and recenter once the rear leg is brought forward. This creates the dynamic hip motion without creating an over exaggerated motion. It is also easy to practice on a treadmill or just walking around.

Good luck and happy walking!