Improving Your Gait & Why It's Important

I know! Hey, everybody is Doctor Jo and Kali in her PJs, and today I'm going to show you ways to improve your gait and why it's important. So let's get started. So before we get started, you will need a piece of equipment. So you're gonna need a stretch strap, if you don't happen to have a stretch strap, you can use belt, you can use the dog leash, if you have a dog leash, you can use a jump rope, you just want it to be something solid, so not a resistive band, because you're going to be doing stretching with it. Before we get started with the exercises in the stretches to help improve your gait. I really want to talk about why it's important to have good gait speed and have good balance when you're walking. And the reason it's important is because when we're when we don't have that gait speed, or we're kind of off balance, that's really an indicator of a lot of injuries, sometimes. It can even predict gross motor skills and functionings in children, it can also kind of predict fall risk in adults if, you know, they're having some balance issues when they're walking, or they have that slow walking or gait pattern, that is an indicator that there's risk for falls. And then it can even kind of help predict if you have an injury or not. And you might say well, most of the time, you know if you have an injury, but sometimes you can have something out of balance or something that's tight, and you're not really sure what's going on. And if you have a professional, assess your gait, then they can help figure that out. And you can work on fixing that. So it doesn't cause other problems in the future. It can really also help like if you, if someone has some cognitive decline, it can be a predictor of even something like dementia. So that's something really important as well, it can also kind of be a predictor of other health issues like cancer and things like that. So if your gait pattern significantly changes, and you see that, you know, hey, I used to be able to walk really fast, or I was walking and I wasn't having any balance issues. But I don't know what's going on is really important to go get an assessment. Usually is some by PT, it can be by your doctor, a lot of times with us PTs, we might have you during the assessment stand up, walk across the room and come back so we can watch it. But in actuality, at least for me, I'm watching you, when you walk into the clinic, you don't even know that you're being watched. Because a lot of times people will try and walk a little bit better when they know someone's watching them. But we can also do tests like a six minute walk and see how far you can walk and six minutes. And now with technology is really cool, because if you go to a specific gait analysis PT, they'll put a whole bunch of sensors on your body, get you on a treadmill and record it. And then they can even do measurements of seeing these little things that we might not be able to see with our naked eye, but the camera will be able to record it. So it's really important to know that your gait speed, and your gait balance is really important of your overall health. So again, if something's not feeling quite right, I'm gonna show you these stretches and exercises that should help. But ideally, go to your doctor, get a referral, go see a PT and find out specifically what's going on. So let's start with some stretches, I know that's what you're looking for. The first one is going to be a calf stretch. When we don't have good motion in our ankles, a lot of times our gait pattern will be off, you might kind of have to stutter step because you're not getting that full motion. So get grabbing that stretch strap. There's a lot of different ways you can stretch your calf. But this one is nice, because you can just kind of relax your whole body. These stretch straps are nice, because they have a loop on them. Make sure and try and get it on the ball of your foot there. Not on your toes because it might slip off not down at your arch because you're not going to get a good stretch. So with this, you're relaxed and you're using the strap the strap to stretch out your calf area. So I'm going to pull, pulling my toes towards me. And again, my foot's relaxed, and I'm using the strap to pull it, I'm feeling that stretch in my calf area. I'm feeling it even a little bit behind my knee because those calf muscles cross that knee joint. And you might feel it at your ankle if your ankle's really tight. So you might feel in a couple different places, you might feel it in all of those places. Hold that for 30 seconds, relax that down. And do that three times on each side. If you want to alternate you can sometimes it's a little easier just to do them all on one side of the strap is always already there. But give yourself a little bit of a break in between maybe 10 to 15 seconds, and then again, getting that nice pull and holding it there for 30 seconds, make sure it's comfortable. Stretching shouldn't be painful, but it should have some tension in it might not feel the best but it shouldn't be painful. So after you get those stretched out, just sitting on the edge of your chair, your bed or your couch. These are just going to be seated heel toe raises. So this is kind of starting off, maybe getting it a little bit loosen up. We're gonna do some standing up stuff as well, but maybe you might not be quite ready for those. So just sitting, bring your feet out just a little bit, maybe about knee hip width apart. And then just like it sounds, lift up your heels nice and slow, come down, and then lift up your toes. So it's just heel toe raises, kind of going back and forth. This is a getting getting that ankle movement, getting that ankle mobility, starting to strengthen the calf muscles a little bit, but you're sitting if you have some balance issues, so really just trying to start getting things moving. If I go nice and slow, and controled, I'm not just doing this going through the motions, that's not really doing anything. But really focus on getting the heels as high as you can come down, get those toes as high as you can, you're really going to feel it in your legs. You can do it for a time, and just do as many as you comfortably can, in 30 seconds, or you can do it for reps, you know, do maybe two sets of 10 to 15. And then kind of progress the reps each time until you get to 20-25. And then you're kind of ready to stand up. So let's go ahead and stand up and do some exercises standing up. So then the progression to standing is going to now be standing heel toe raises. Make sure when you start off with these, you're holding on to something like your countertop in the kitchen, maybe next to the wall holding onto the wall, get a nice sturdy chair, but make sure you're holding on to start off with, you might see that I'm a little bit wobbly when I'm not holding on to stuff. But eventually you can do it without holding on as long as you feel comfortable and strong. So it's again, just kind of like it sounds, you're going to be doing heel toe raises standing. So I'm just coming up, lifting up my heels as high as I can nice and slow coming down. So really try and control the coming down part instead of just popping out and then pulling my toes up. Now when you pull your toes up, it's not sticking your booty back to get those up. Your toes aren't going to come very high. But make sure your booty is tucked in, and your toes come up and down. And then heels, toes just kind of rocking back and forth. But a lot of times, people think they have to get their toes higher, and they really kind of do this, that's not really getting the muscles working, you're just kind of changing the position of your body. So really try and control those movements. Again, it doesn't have to be super high, but you're trying to control it. So again, you can do that for time. Or you can do that for reps. Once you get that down and doing well. Now we're going to start doing some movements. Again, if you have some balance issues, if you have some gait issues, if you've got your cane or your walker, make sure and use that you know, use your assistive device. And then you know maybe as you get better and maybe you're working with your therapist, you can you can not use them. But use that to start off with. So this one's just going to be an exaggerated heel to toe walk. When we walk, we start we hit our heel. And then we were roll through and then we push off on our toes, that's how we do a heel strike is what we call it and then pushing off with our toes. So really just exaggerate that while you walk, I'm you know, hitting my heel, rolling onto my toes, getting that exaggeration, but looking trying to look for so try not to look at your toes. Now I'm really getting that heel pushing off on my toe, and then heel to toe like that. So I don't want to zoom off into the the white cloud back there. But you can make it you know, go down your hall. Or if you got an open space, if you got some nice space outside where it's smooth, you can do that as well. But again, really kind of exaggerate that heel to toe. So that's also going to stretch out everything when you do it as well. So you can do that a couple of times. You know, if you want to do for distance again, or you know, if you want to say if you have a length go, you I want to go there and back twice. Or I'm just going to try this for 30 seconds and see how it goes. If that gets good, and you're doing well with that, and you're getting your legs stronger, and getting more mobility in there, so you're getting more movement and feel more balance, then try doing some normal walking, just walking, but turning your head. And this is going to help with your balance. So again, make sure if you're using an assistant advice to use it, if you've got someone with you have them close by because sometimes when you turn your head, it does throw you off balance. So have somebody with you when you're trying this for the first couple of times. And also, we do this when we walk anyways, we're walking, and we turn and we talk to a friend or a partner as we go. So this kind of helps with that. That's when people get off out there looking and they say what, and then they kind of get off balance. So all you're doing is just walking and slowly turning your head back and forth. So I'm looking each way while I'm walking, I don't have to walk fast. You can see I wasn't going in a perfect straight line. But I'm not turning my head really fast either. It's just a consistent side to side. If you even need to go a little bit slower and then look ahead, in turn, you can do that as well. So just go at your own pace. If you need to go a little bit slower, that's fine. And then eventually you can pick up your speed if you feel a little bit stronger and more balanced. And then make your head turns just a little bit quicker. But make sure you're being safe while you're done. going on that. So there you have it those were ways to improve gait and why it's important if you'd like to help support my channel click on link up there and don't forget to subscribe by clicking down there and remember be safe, have fun, and I hope you feel better soon.