You're walking along.
You find yourself moving faster and faster.
How are you going to get your legs to keep up?

Not a problem you've ever come across?

Actually you have.
When you trip up, isn't that exactly what happens?
You find yourself moving faster and faster.

Until
… either you manage to catch yourself
… or you have a close encounter with the pavement.

Isn't it ironic?

The only time you don't have a problem going fast enough.
… is when you trip.

When you trip, your problem becomes:    

Wouldn't it be good to always have that problem?

… and know where the brakes are?

You can.

You can learn how to walk fast without effort
… and without fear of falling.

How?

Tripping gives us a clue:–

• When you're in balance, your problem is getting going.
• When you're out of balance, your problem is slowing down.

So, to fly along …

You need to be always out of balance
… in a controlled way.

Permanently out of balance!

But take it steady. It's no good being so out of balance your legs can't keep up.

How do you take it steady?

You throw balance to the four winds

… and discover poise.

Here's how you discover poise:–

1. First things first. Before you can hope to walk with poise, you must be able to stand poised.
2. To stand poised, you need a free neck.
3. To walk with poise you also need steady hips. Not a wobbly gatepost.

I've dealt with the first point, standing poised, in
Balance or poise: Would you rather be stiff as a statue or poised like a trapeze artist?

… and the second point, a free neck, in
Poised for action: How a free neck makes you more alert.

So let's look at the third point, the wobbly gatepost.

The wobbly gatepost

A freely swinging gate needs a firm, steady post to swing from.

A farm gate with a wobbly gatepost just doesn't swing easily.
To move it, you first have to lift it off the ground
… then you have to carry it over to the open position.

Your legs don't swing easily either.

What do you do to move a leg?

You lift the whole leg from the hip. You sway over onto the other leg to make room to lift your foot off the ground.

That's not how it's meant to work

If your hips would just stay steady, you could simply let your knee bend.

As your whole body started falling forwards, your knee would bend. Your thigh would swing forward, pendulum-like, from your steady hips.

Your foot, following your knee, would peel itself off the ground: heel first, then the ball of your foot and finally your big toe.

When your big toe was off the ground, your lower leg would also swing forward — from the knee, also pendulum-like.

Your foot, being attached to the end of that second pendulum, would follow.

Willy-nilly.

Your foot would no longer be behind you. It would land right underneath your forwards-toppling body.

… neatly catching it.

So you'd never actually fall at all. You'd topple forwards without ever falling.

Is that a neat way to walk or what?

Why doesn't your leg work like that?

It's that wobbly gatepost.

Your body, from head/neck joint to hip joint, should be acting as one solid lever.

It isn't.

Your back is bending at the waist so that your hips swing backwards and forwards as you move your leg.

Almost everybody's hips do that
… and it's hard work.

No wonder your leg doesn't swing easily.
No wonder you daren't trust it to swing forwards of its own accord and catch you as you fall.
No wonder you daren't let yourself topple forwards.

Unless you trip, you never need to use the brakes. Walking more slowly is no problem.

Your problem is not slowing down
… it's keeping going.

Summary

Walking fast becomes easy if you let yourself fall forwards.
But you need brakes — you need to control the fall. You need poise.

Walking poise requires:–

1. standing poise
2. a free neck
3. steady hips — not a wobbly gatepost.

Steady hips allow your legs to swing freely and keep up with your toppling body.

Do you want to be able to fly along?
Without any close encounters with the pavement?

Then learn poise.

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