Does walking down stairs hurt?
“Every time I go downstairs, I hurt.” This is what my 81 year old mother said during her latest visit over the holidays.
Let me tell you about my mom - she’s 81 and full of spunk and laughter and can tell you anything you want to know about dog training and clean eating. She takes great care of herself and is determined to keep living an active life. But she does have arthritis which sometimes makes moving challenging.
My mom has knee, ankle, lower back and shoulder issues. She deals with inflammation every day. So it is imperative to figure out ways to make movement easier. She’s been to physical therapy and takes care of exercising and strengthening her muscles - but it’s still not enough to keep from being in pain.
So, we went to the stairs in my home to see what was going on.
When we’re in pain, we tend to hold ourselves taut and pull into our bodies. We do this to protect ourselves, but when we are trying to move, this holding adds tension and can lead to more strain and discomfort. This was exactly what my mom was doing as she was coming down the stairs.
Here’s what helped:
She allowed her pelvis to move! Not just side to side, but also up and down. It helped to practice a rolling movement with the pelvis - like a dance move - that glided through these four directions. Of course, when you do that, it’s not just your pelvis moving in space, but also flexibility in your lower spine that allows this to happen. This was huge! I stood in front of her with my hands on her hips and helped her feel the movement of her pelvis when she bent her knee to take a step. When you do this without holding, the left knee naturally points towards the right, allowing the pelvis to go along with it. And conversely, the right knee, when bent, naturally points to the left and the pelvis shifts there, too. It took a minute to figure out that the whole torso did not need to go to these different directions, but that allowing flexibility in the lower spine can keep the upper torso and shoulders pointing straight ahead, but we did it.
Next, mom let her moving leg extend down towards the stair below. Thinking of the pelvis moving to make the leg extension means that she didn’t have to bend her support leg more to make the downward step happen. This is so much easier on the knees!
Third, she allowed as much flexibility in her ankles as she had - both in her support leg and especially in her moving leg. We discovered that her habit was to come down the stairs with more of a flat foot. Flexibility in the ankle enabled her to reach the next stair in less distance so that the ball of her foot came to the stair first, and then the whole foot settled on the stair below.
In essence, movement of the pelvis and flexibility of the ankle makes the distance between the stairs smaller. Thus, your knees don’t have to work so hard to get you down there.
My mom was practically dancing down the stairs without her normal discomfort within the span of about 10 minutes!
Have I mentioned lately how much I love this work! Go mom, go!
