Posture and form

(Originally written on May 15)

Last Friday I took a late night walk in a park near where we live back home, trying to clear some thoughts in my mind and have a think about what I'd do in the future. Ended up not thinking about those stuff at all. Instead, my attentions turned to the way I walked.

Yup, you have to pay attention to the movements when you walk.

Back when I first started cycling, I didn't pay much attention to my pedaling style. In fact, even long after acquiring a pair of Shimano shoes and PD1056 pedals, I still wasn't fully utilizing the powerful system to it's full benefit. Now I know how to really pedal in circles. But back then, every stroke was forwards and downwards. Stomping as they call it.

Soon enough I started to develop regular cramping in my calf and thighs, particularly quads. Also, from those repeatedly sustained injuries, my calf muscles and Achilles tendons became tight, restricting the range of motions in my heels.

Walking bare-footed on hard grounds gives you a chance to get a good extension/stretch in the calf muscles. As shown below, in the typical designs of modern athletic shoes, the front of the sole has an slight arc. This design promotes quick forward shifting of one's body mass, and also helps the weight transition in running. But in daily exercises, especially in walking, this feature kind of lower the extent of your calf muscles (gastrocnemius and soleus) being stretched.

As noted in the above picture, walking in the common athletic shoes would probably result in your ankle look a bit like this. (The original drawing however has nothing to do with this topic. These are just convenient images found by Google... I've linked them back to the source pages and hopefully they won't sue me for the usage.)

On the contrary, walking bare-footed would get your hind-foot develop an heel angle like the above Egyptian. 

So then after walking for like half an hour, I felt a bit more range in my ankles' movement. Now that's a good sign.

And surprisingly, in the massage afterwards, I found... this.

 

It was the first time in a long period that I was able to get my calf muscles totally relaxed and softened up. That was probably due to my walking bare-footed, which effectively acted like a series of PNF stretching (with the eccentric contraction of the calf muscles in the hind leg every time when you've stepped out your front foot). Doing massage only wouldn't be of this much use.

And another isteresting fact is, with the complete relaxation of the calf muscles, I was able to locate an old wound caused by cramping. Apart from the different touch, you can even visually point out the whereabouts (as shown in the above enhanced photo) of the problematic tissue. A place with particullarly tought miscles and had cramped in neumerous occations in the past two or three years.