Most people have never watched themselves walk. It’s such an automatic movement that it doesn’t occur to us to pay attention to it, let alone analyse it. But when you come in for an assessment, one of the first things we do is watch you walk – sometimes just across the room, sometimes on a treadmill with cameras recording from multiple angles.
It’s called gait analysis, and it tells us a surprising amount that you’d never notice about yourself.
Here’s some of what we’re actually looking for, and why it matters.
How your foot lands
Most people assume their foot just “lands” – but where and how it makes contact with the ground varies a lot from person to person, and it matters.
Some feet land more toward the outside edge (supination), others roll inward more than they should after landing (overpronation). A small amount of inward roll is completely normal and part of how the foot absorbs shock. Too much or too little, though, changes how load travels up through the foot, ankle, and further up the leg.
You won’t feel this happening in real time. It’s not painful in the moment, rather it’s the cumulative effect over thousands of steps a day that eventually shows up as pain somewhere else entirely.
Whether your steps are even on both sides
Most people assume they walk symmetrically. In reality, almost nobody does, and small differences are usually not a problem. What we’re looking for is asymmetry that’s significant enough to suggest one side is compensating for the other. Things like a shorter stride on one leg, less push-off on one side, or one foot striking the ground differently to the other.
This kind of imbalance is often connected to pain that seems to be in a completely unrelated spot. Hip pain, knee pain, and lower back pain can all trace back to how the feet are behaving during gait, even though it feels like the problem starts higher up.
How much your knee and hip move (or don’t)
Watching your walk isn’t just about the feet. We’re also watching how your knees track as you step, and whether your hips rotate and shift the way they should.
A knee that drifts inward with each step, for example, can be a sign that muscles around the hip and foot aren’t controlling the leg’s alignment properly. Over time, this kind of pattern puts extra strain on the knee joint itself.
The rhythm and timing of your steps
Walking has a rhythm, one that is a fairly consistent pattern of how long your foot is in contact with the ground, how long it’s in the air, and how that alternates between sides.
Changes in this rhythm, like spending noticeably longer on one foot than the other, or a hesitant, uneven cadence, can point to pain avoidance, muscle weakness, or sometimes issues that aren’t foot-related at all.
Your posture and upper body movement
It might seem unrelated, but how your arms swing, how upright you hold yourself, and whether your trunk shifts side to side as you walk all factor into a proper gait assessment.
The body works as a connected system. A restriction or weakness in one area often shows up as a compensation somewhere else, and that compensation frequently ends up at the feet, since they’re absorbing the load from everything above.
Why this matters more than it seems
None of these things are things you’d notice by simply asking, “does my foot hurt?” That’s exactly why gait analysis is useful. It picks up patterns that are contributing to pain or are likely to cause pain down the track, well before you’d notice them yourself.
It also explains why two people with what sounds like the same complaint, for example, arch pain, can need quite different treatment plans. The pain might be in the same place, but the way it’s being caused, revealed through how each person actually walks, can be completely different.
It’s also why treatment based purely on where it hurts, without looking at how you move, often only provides short-term relief. If the underlying movement pattern that’s overloading a particular area isn’t addressed, the same issue, or a related one somewhere else, tends to resurface.
What we do with what we see
Once we’ve identified a pattern, it shapes the whole plan. Whether that’s specific strengthening exercises, footwear changes, orthotics to support a particular part of the gait cycle, or a combination of these.
It’s not about “fixing” your walk to match some ideal template; everyone’s gait is a little different, and that’s normal. It’s about identifying where the pattern is placing excess strain and addressing that directly.
If you’ve got pain that keeps coming back despite treating the sore spot directly, or you’re just curious what your walk might be telling us, it’s worth coming in for a proper look.
Book in with the team at Watsonia Podiatry – sometimes the answer isn’t in the part of the foot that hurts, but in how you’re getting there.
