Adjust your gait for more spring in your step

Need more spring in your step? Adjusting your gait might give you more confidence, encourage you to move more, and help to prevent a fall.

Several things can affect how you walk, particularly as you age, according to Sarah Eldred, DPT, a staff physical therapist at Cape Cod Healthcare’s Oppenheim Rehabilitation Center in Chatham. But there’s not one “normal” way to get from here to there, she said.

“Gait is the way someone walks; it’s their baseline. When somebody comes to me, it’s usually because of a change in that baseline. They’re not functioning as well anymore.”

Changes in gait, balance and perception add to the risk of falls that can affect quality of life and healthcare costs, particularly for older people, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Things That Affect Gait

Being out of shape is just one thing that can affect gait and balance, Eldred says. Among the others:

• Poor posture or curvature of your spine;
• Numbness or neuropathy in your feet;
• Inner ear issues that affect balance;
• Surgery, such as a knee or hip replacement;
• Vision problems, including progressive lenses, that might affect perception or how you move your head;
• Injury from a fall;
• Problems with cognition, perhaps due to a stroke or dementia;
• Lack of flexibility, such as neck stiffness that makes it hard to swivel your head and compensate for vision loss;
• Lack of confidence that causes you to widen your stance or walk duck-footed to get broader support.

Ironically, the best thing you can do to improve your gait is to walk, assuming you can do it safely, said Eldred. Start slowly, she cautioned, perhaps setting a timer to ensure you’re getting up and out of your chair on a regular basis.

“Walking is a great thing to do because you’re exposing your brain and your vision to other things. And you don’t need to go to the gym for that,” she said.

5 Ways to Improve Your Gait

If you’re concerned about your gait or not feeling safe, here are five more things you can do to improve how you walk, according to Eldred:

• Try exercises to build up flexibility and strength. Eldred suggests this one for your hip muscles: Stand in front of a wall, deck railing or counter with your feet facing forward and sidestep, several paces one way and then back. You can also do this in a pool. “Those muscles on the outer hips are imperative to our balance, and to getting out of a chair, and to going up and down the stairs,” she said.
• Need a tool for steady support? One clue might be if you’re reaching to touch the wall or the back of a chair as you move. There’s no shame in a cane or a walker if it helps you keep moving.
• Try to be aware of your feet. One tip from Eldred for stairs: As you come down the stairs, click your heel against the riser just to confirm where your foot is.
• Look forward, not at the ground. That can cause you to bend your knees and flex your hips in a dangerous way. “It’s fine to glance down so you can check the ground, but you shouldn't have to stare at the ground and stare at your feet,” Eldred said. “Not only does it limit what you're seeing that you could walk into, but it throws your weight behind you at your hips, and in front of you above, and you could topple more easily.”
• Consider physical therapy. Your doctor can do a balance and gait assessment to see if working with a therapist might help. The therapist can then work on specific issues to give you more movement and more confidence Eldred says. “You don’t have to wait until you fall,” she said. “If you’re feeling that something’s not working the way it was, talk to your doctor and see if it’s appropriate to talk about balance. Then we try to see how we can affect that in a positive way.”