Acting Journal 1: 1/20/2015

Acting Journal 1: 1/20/2015

Reflection on my walking patterns.

In general, I have three basic walking patterns. They are normal (flat footed), on the balls of my feet, and when carrying large burdens. I typically find myself walking flat footed most of the time, but due to my martial arts training, will often walk flat-footed in order to train balance and leg strength. My motivation to walk while carrying heavy burdens, is typically to transport supplies/books, or on occasion for training/conditioning.

Flat-Footed walking

When I walk flat-footed my feet generally strike the ground near the middle of the foot. I often walk or dance barefoot, so I have a high degree of sensitivity to the surface of the ground when walking. I often notice things like the feel of the ground, whether it is even, uneven, springy, or rocky. Having experienced traversing over nearly every common surface, I can tell a lot about where I am, just by using how the ground feels. A dip in elevation, a change in consistency, can quickly tell me if I have left a path, and say, wandered onto the grass. In fact, I on occasion practice walking and navigating with my eyes closed, relying on my sense of touch and timing to “guesstimate” where I am in my physical environment.

        I am often barefoot, and in fact love the feel of a good dew under my feet. Since feet have an very large amount of nerves, I actually derive great pleasure from walking places barefoot, and due to my years of walking/martial arts training, I need only minimal actual protection on my feet in most situations.  Primarily, I do need footwear when in extreme cold, I prefer it in extreme heat, and I am required to wear it in construction areas. Other than that, I will go barefoot there. I love say traveling through a nature trail barefoot, I get to feel the mud, the rain, and the soil, in-between my toes. It makes me very happy, and very connected to my environment to be able to touch the ground directly.

        There are also many situations, where due to wet footwear, I feel it is more prudent to be barefoot than to wear shoes. Honestly, I find wet shoes more uncomfortable than anything I am likely to encounter barefoot, other than freezing cold.

        Since I am used to, and enjoy walking great distances, while walking my mind often wanders to the beauty of the world, or daydreams. I also practice whistling, or light balance/strength training by holding things up while walking. The infrequent 10-25 mile hike is one of the highlights of ANY vacation time that I have.

Ball of the foot walking.

In contrast to flat-footed walking, Ball of the foot walking I do less frequently, and for different reasons. Typically I walk on the balls of my feet in order to practice/condition my legs for martial arts/dancing. When I do so, my balance, and center of gravity shifts. Generally what happens, is that I lift both back feet off of the ground, so that each heel is about a quarter of an inch off of the ground. I then start walking. However, when doing so, since my center of mass shifts, this typically necessitates both changing the length and slightly curving my stride. This adds an extra “swagger” around my hips, as they sway side-to-side to react to the changes in motion from my feet.

        Typically my ball of the feet walking is about as fast, if not slightly swifter than my standard flat-footed walking. However, it works additional ankle muscle groups harder than normal, and thus is more exhausting/less sustainable than my standard stride. However, despite the fact that I do not do long walks under these conditions, short walks of between 1-3 miles are quite feasible during this form of stride

        One of the other things of note, during this form of stride, is that while my heels have no weight directed unto them, by default, they still often touch the ground as weight shifts onto them, on the bottom of the step. This is actually considered a “feature” as it allows for a certain amount of “spring” to be put in my step, and as my heels are not locking down into the ground/cancelling my momentum, this allows for less momentum loss overall on my system as a whole, for as long as my ankle strength is able to sustain the additional load.

            Walking under heavy load

Ever since I lugged around 70lbs of Sunday specials, for my paper route as a teenager, I have been used to carrying large burdens while on my feet. Presently this often happens when purchasing groceries at local stores, when travelling to school with a fully loaded book-bag, or when training with additional weights.

        Carrying large amounts of groceries, is primarily an exercise in weight distribution. Typically when I bother to have my green army duffel on, it’s fairly simple to put the weight up there, and walk home, albeit somewhat more slowly than normal. I’d estimate, I lose about ½ to 1 mph of walking speed when carrying a large load in this manner. This is of course also not accounting for when I don’t have my army duffel on me. In those situations, I generally will place grocery bags on the shaft of my walking stick. This creates problems of its own, when do to the balance difficulties, and additional weight, I may lose cargo, or be slowed even more than if it were in the duffel. When doing so, I often shift the weight to my shoulders, using the stick to make a yoke. While this helps distribute the weight better, it also causes greater strain on my spine/back which makes my unpleasurable compared to my standard nature walks, or training.

        Additionally, with or without additional weight, I often put 5lbs of ankle weights on above each foot. This typical has the effect of making me feel as if I were walking through molasses with each step, and reduces the length of my stride considerably. It is also a very large strain should I choose to do on the ball of the foot strides, which limits my ability to do both simultaneously.