Walking Straight

步不活则拳乱，步不快则拳慢

Boxing is confused when one’s steps are not vivid, not fast when they are slow.

打人如走路

Hitting is like walking.

一步練錯百步歪

One step trained wrongly, a hundred wicked ones.

Posture and semi-static moves learned, one finally could walk. Walking knows a lot of different kinds of training some with tools, all meant to first provide the best balance and rooting while having one’s roots in motion and, of course, also power and precision.
One can divide the training between speed and balance issues, regular walking, where there is a three-steps method echoing the one in posture training, to unusual ones using tools or incorporating other principles.

I. A Question of Pace

The first problem while walking is having the right pace. Pace is actually not a question of speed, but of how to put one foot after the other. Still, to learn it correctly, one has to start from slow to end up going fast, something actually quite obvious.

1.1 One Foot After The Other

Most people, when walking, go from one unbalance to the other, falling from one foot to the other. This kind of unsteadiness seems to make the walk faster, but it actually betrays a underlying nervousness, especially in hectic modern life, which makes us less aware of what we are doing. Hence, learning to be fully on one’s foot and in balance at every step instead of just going in an unsteady way for the other foot once one is on the ground has more implications than just balance.

a. Balanced

A correct stepping for old practices is to stand totally on one’s foot and in perfect balance before going on the other. Hence, that’s the first thing one would practise and a lot of styles still pay attention to such way of stepping during training. The problem lies, as usual, with leisurely training where one may do it for a couple hours a day at most but then goes back to the regular unsteady walk the rest of the day. Old professional practices, 24/7, made sure that the student would end up walking one foot well balanced on the ground after the other at all times. If the risk of totally losing one’s balance is the obvious one, structure, reactivity and impact on the organs are the others.

b. Structure, Reactivity, Organs

As the third quote can point out too, walking in an unsteady way can have dire consequences. It is not just a question of keeping one’s balance, one cannot keep a proper structure when walking in such an unsteady pace. Furthermore, the brain having to deal with keeping the body from totally losing its balance naturally impact reactivity. Finally, there is, for old practices, a link through the fascias between the feet and the organs*. While partly unbalanced, the feet do not step correctly (shoes sole deterioration being a good way to check how one is not correctly stepping), which pressures more some fascia lines and fewer others, bringing the unsteady feet to unbalance the organs and generally more stress**. 

1.2 Speed

The best way to correct oneself, as far as structure is concerned, is to do it slowly at first. Furthermore, the hectic pace of modern life imposes makes it even more interesting to learn to walk slowly as a way to calm down one’s emotions.

The idea is very simple, one has to learn to slow down, as slow as possible while walking. Slowly from a whole foot touching the ground to the other in the same manner instead of just a part of one nervously quickly followed by a part of the other. 

Once the sensation to go from a whole one to the other found, moving the off the ground leg in various ways, like the goose-step or any of the basic leg works will improve further one’s balance. Then only, one can contemplate ways to move faster while still checking if the foot is fully balanced on the ground.

Being able to be fully balanced on one foot, one would go on to learn balance on only a part.

II. Three-Steps Method

The basic three-steps method of walking uses the terrain to improve the grounding, power generation and braking capacities of the feet. Basically uphill helps improve grounding and power while downhill breaking and on flat ground is reserved for regular on the whole feet walking.

2.1 Uphill and the Heel

Going up is about power and, thus, being grounded. As already mentioned in Know Your Foot, the heel, part of the hindfoot, is mainly used for power and grounding. The idea is, then, to first put the heel on the ground and then the rest of the foot while pushing to go up.

Such way of walking has another benefit, especially with stairs, it gets the knee ready to support the extra tension coming from going up by tensing it in advance. Indeed, lifting up the toes in order for the feet to have the heel first stomp naturally tense the knee. Since, at that time, the knee is in the air, the tension is soft and it will be then ready for the strenuous climbing effort. Otherwise, especially when climbing up steps (going uphill one normally naturally raises its toes), the knee goes from a relax position to a very stressed one due to the sudden effort, shocks that may be damaging in the long term.

2.2 Downhill and the Toes

The natural extra speed one gets going downhill is used as a way to improve the toes braking capacity also described in Know Your Foot. Opposite to uphill, the toes shall be the first part of the feet to touch the ground, also improving the fascia lines since they are the end of half of them.

In the same manner as for uphill, putting the toes first is another way to protect the knees as the shocks of going downhill will be first absorbed by the toes, then the heel, to finally come to an already tensed knee as pointing with the toes also naturally tenses it while it’s in the air.

2.3 Flat, All Flat

On even ground, one then walks normally trying to put the whole feet on it, any and every part at the same time, keeping one’s balance on one foot as it has already been mentioned in the first chapter.

When doing so, one learns how to put a whole relaxed body pressure on his foot, which will naturally have the toes bend and grip the ground. Toes naturally gripping without having to think about is actually a way to check out if one’s muscles are really relaxed.

Apart from the three-steps theory, there are also many other ways to train the feet.

III. Tools And Incorporating

There are, of course, tools in training that will improve walking with a total balance and, also, working on less workable parts of the feet. Furthermore, walking is also a way to really incorporate training principles. As the second saying reversely points out, what you can do while walking is what you really master. To illustrate both methods, the example of the poles and the peeping thief will be taken.

3.1 Tools

Training on poles is a Chinese martial arts typical exercise. As far as walking is concerned, it is a way to fulfil the need to be totally balanced on one foot and a way to stress on keeping balance on different parts of the foot when the poles get thinner and thinner.

Poles are part of a broader method which consists of greatly improving balance through acrobatic exercises, which can be divided into four different types:

• Grounded tools such as dug poles.
• Non-grounded ones such as bricks put on the ground or Ippon Geta type of shoes.
• Unstable tools such as balloons.
• Thinner and thinner tools, with the legendary walking on the tip of a broadsword blade.

3.2 Incorporation

Putting everything into walking is, of course, one of the aims of training, being able to fight and walk at the same time giving more flexibility and dexterity than having to stop on two feet to hit someone. The peeping thief technique described earlier in this blog can be a good example of it. Such training focuses on lightness and awareness and putting them into one’s walk is definitely a must.

The peeping thief being of the cornerstones of the very slow training, one has to, obviously, start walking slowly with the intent to be ready to move swiftly. The idea is to start to walk faster and faster with the intent of moving suddenly even swifter when needed until one reaches the level of being fast and furious. When doing so, one will realise how different is walking using the method described in the first chapter of this post, as he/she will literally bounce from a foot to the other while walking fast, feeling almost like jumping at every step.

Hitting and walking at the same time is obviously a technique which applies more to bandits and assassins, the need to flee and fight at the same time dictating it. The same would apply if someone becomes prey. Gatekeepers, for example, may seem to be in less of such a need. It is, nevertheless, a mistake to think so as the aim of such training lies in reaching a perfect balance on each foot.

*Reflexology being one of the applications of such theory.

**Walking on an uneven full of small rocks ground can make someone realise the link between stepping and stress.