While it might seem simple on the surface, walking is as complex and unique as we are. From heart rate to muscle function, taking a step synthesizes many essential bodily functions. This makes understanding how we walk central to our well-being – each footfall contains essential information about our overall health.
Most people don’t evenly distribute their weight when they move. Supination and its opposite, pronation, are terms that describe where someone puts most of their weight when they walk or run. Walkers that supinate tend to put more weight on the outside of their foot, while walkers that pronate tend to put more weight on the inside of their foot. Both supination and pronation are entirely normal. All healthy walkers naturally distribute their weight in different ways.
Nothing in particular causes supination. Everyone is born with physical differences caused by genetic predispositions, which influence how we move. Muscle strength or weakness around the feet, ankles, and calves, in addition to anatomical particularities of the arches and imbalanced leg lengths, can all impact weight distribution at a young age. These differences can turn into preferences or habitual movement patterns over time. Supination tends to be more common in athletes and people who love to run or jog, but it may also simply result from predispositions, preferences, or patterns.
There is no uniform way that everyone should walk. Although supination is less common than pronation, your ideal walking style depends entirely on you. That said, there is a difference between healthy supination and unhealthy supination. As you walk, here are some things to be aware of about supination and how they might impact your health:
While usually not as severe as overpronation, which can more severely impact the knees and hips, supination tends to put more strain on the ankles, leading to discomfort and other issues. Excessive supination can lead to the development of pain regions on the outer foot, heel, ankle, and elsewhere, which can impact and impede your walking health. And because excessive supination means that your body weight is unevenly distributed on the outside of your foot, supination can also predispose you to other injuries such as strains and sprains. .
Knowing the difference between an average degree of supination and excessive supination in your walk can be difficult. One way to investigate your degree of supination is to assess the wear pattern of your shoes. If they are more worn on the outside, this can be a sign you are over-supinating.
However, examining wear patterns will only give you a small piece of the overall picture. To understand how supination may impact your walking health, it’s important to use dynamic assessments like the gait-analysis technology found in Baliston shoes, to detect variations in your walk.
Baliston’s footwear service helps to assess any supination in the larger context of your other movement patterns and overall health, providing you insights and recommendations to help relieve pain, reduce fatigue, and prevent injury. Providing this holistic coaching critical, because it’s typically not just one factor that negatively impacts your walking health, but many factors working together.
Even small changes in the way you walk over time can cause more serious health problems in the future. Paying attention to your feet and investing in your walking health will empower you with the information and confidence you need to go the distance.
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