Practice Makes Permanent: Knees and Hips

The first part of the series, Feet, is here.

In this article, we will look at the knees and hips- we are working our way up the body.

Knees
Should point in the direction of the feet and should be controlled during marching/walking. Save your knees, don’t extend them past your feet. Here are some knee exercises. Also see this article, Is Your Walking Style Helping or Hurting?.

Hips
Your hips should move up and down: up as your leg comes back during your stride and down as your leg extends forward. Your spine and hips should not rotate forward and back. The image at right, from walkinghealthy.com, shows proper hip alignment on the left side and improper hip rotation on the right side- the image is the top view from the hips down, direction of march is down the page.

Great hip alignment information is here.

This is a great video to watch for proper hip movement:

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Proper foot, knee and hip alignment work to create good posture when walking/marching. Make sure that you exercise and stretch your ankles, knees and hips.

Note: Sometimes certain physical conditions/limitations prevent proper marching technique. If this is the case, you may want to seek medical advice.