Why leg rotation increases Core Strength
(and makes you walk with more presence)
You know, sometimes your Demented Mechanic actually has reason on his side.
He does? When?
When your hips are tilted forwards.
When your hips are tilted forwards, it throws your whole upper body forwards. When that happens, you arch your back. Arching your back is the only way to compensate for the forwards tilt of your hips. So you see, your Demented Mechanic has an excellent excuse for insisting that you arch your back.
Reasonable excuses apart, the real solution would be to stop tilting your hips forwards. Before we can see how to stop tilting your hips, we need to look at your hip joint.
How your hip joint works
The muscles that bend your hip joint and take your knee forward when you walk are Psoas and Iliacus. To keep it simple, we’ll just call them Psoas.
NOTE: Remember, the hip joints are not the same thing as hips. The hip joints are the two joints between the pelvic girdle and your two thigh bones. (“Pelvic girdle” is the anatomical name for hips).
Let’s get back to that Psoas muscle. When walking, your Psoas muscle does two things: it swings your leg forwards and it also rotates your leg outwards (outwards around the long axis of your thigh bone). This outwards rotation always accompanies the forward movement because that’s how the hip joint and Psoas muscle are organised to work.
If the thigh rotates outwards when it swings forwards, it also rotates inwards when it swings back. Often, though, this rotation doesn’t happen. When the rotation doesn’t happen, it’s because other muscles are holding your hip joint stiff, preventing the rotation.
Allowing your leg to rotate inwards stretches Psoas
More to the point, failing to allow your leg to rotate inwards enough means that Psoas doesn’t get enough stretch.
Psoas shortens to take your knee forwards and has to lengthen again to allow you to step over your leg and let it swing back. However, if you don’t allow your leg to rotate enough inwards as you step over it, you don’t stretch Psoas enough. Your insufficiently-stretched Psoas is too short to allow your hips to stay up out of your legs. The too-short Psoas muscle pulls your hips down into your legs, holding them tethered down there.
Stretching Psoas straightens your pelvis up
If you get used to encouraging your leg to rotate inwards every time you step forwards over it, you will be lengthening the muscular tether that the over-shortened Psoas muscle had become and easing your hips up out of your legs. No longer tied down, your pelvis straightens up. Believe me, it’s a great feeling when your hips begin to ease up out of your legs so that they no longer tilt forwards.
Since your hips no longer tilt forwards, you no longer have to arch your lumbar spine to stand upright. You’ve taken away your Demented Mechanic’s one good argument.
Minus that argument, you can now send your Demented Mechanic packing with a flea in his ear. You can undo his mis-conceived work. You can disengage the crane effect that uses your back muscles to pull your chest back and up, off your belly. No longer craned back and up, your chest is deposited back onto your belly, where it belongs. This simple weight of chest resting on belly is all it takes to engage your core muscles.
And that’s what we set out to find. We discovered how to engage your core muscles so that they provide you with core strength.
…and walk with more presence
The other thing that happens when you allow your legs to rotate is that you walk in a much taller, more stately, more imposing way. If you wish, you now have the ability to make everybody look at you when you enter a room.
Why is this?
When you allow maximum inward rotation of each leg as you step on to it, you become noticeably taller. Your gait becomes at once more supple and more stately. It’s great if you need to exert authority without even trying. Suddenly, people take notice of you and listen to what you say.
Summary
Don’t give your Demented Mechanic free licence to roll up his crane and haul your chest back and up off your belly. Instead, start learning to allow your thighs to rotate as you walk. For details on how to do that, review last week’s article: “How to avoid tearing a knee ligament”. (If you don’t remember the Demented Mechanic, I introduced him in “How to stop your Demented Mechanic giving you that bad back”).
Your prize for taking what I’ve written and running with it will be much improved Core Strength, a taller, more upright stance and a stately, imposing presence that would otherwise elude you for ever.
The other articles in this category are here:‒
Personal Coaching by Philip Pawley
If you want to get the best kind of help, come to me for an introductory lesson in Liverpool.
If you’re too far away, then the next best thing is to get personal lessons and advice from me online at Repoise.com, my on-line school. (Both far-away and local pupils use Repoise).
In more detail:–
If you’re in Liverpool (or can get to Liverpool)
- There’s nothing better than individual lessons. My practice is at 37 Hope Street, Liverpool L1. Ring me on 0151 708 6172 to book an initial consultation and first lesson. (Leave your number so I can get back to you).
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If you’re short of funds, you can still have first class training from me — though it will require a little more work on your part.
The thing to do is have an individual, in-person lesson just once a month. That will entitle you to also get regular on-line lessons from me through Repoise. That way, you have the best of both worlds: in-person lessons and very regular, even daily, on-line Personal Coaching by Philip Pawley from me. That’s a real bargain because Repoise costs the equivalent of three lessons a year to everyone else.
Ring me on 0151 708 6172 if you want to arrange this.
- I occasionally run group lessons. If you’re interested in these, go here for details.
If you’re further away and can’t get to Liverpool
- There’s still nothing better than individual lessons. Here’s where you can find a teacher near you in the UK or elsewhere
- I suggest you also get direct day-to-day guidance from me by joining Repoise.
If you’re having plain Alexander Technique lessons from someone else, you still need to discover the Smiling Back Method of the Alexander Technique. You’ll get a lot more out of your lessons when you do.
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Telephone: +44 151 708 6172 Mobile: +44 7872 905 154
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