Podiatrist · Specialist in Biomechanics · Founder of VOLKAN
"The body does not age solely with the passage of time. It also ages with the absence of movement."
"Every year I am a little worse"
It is a phrase I hear frequently.
People in their forties, fifties, or sixties tell me resignedly:
—It’s normal.
—Age does not forgive.
—I used to do these things and now I can’t.
I always ask them the same question.
—What has really changed?
And many times the answer is not in the years.
It’s in the lifestyle.
More hours sitting.
Less walking.
More car.
More screens.
More office work.
Less spontaneous movement.
The body does not respond solely to the calendar.
It responds, above all, to how we live.
The organism always saves energy
Our body is extraordinarily efficient.
Everything we use frequently tries to conserve it.
Everything we stop using begins to reduce it.
If we walk less…
The muscles lose capacity.
The joints receive less stimulation.
The bones reduce their remodeling.
Balance becomes less precise.
The nervous system receives less information.
Not because the body wants to harm us.
But because it tries to save resources.
Maintaining a function that we never use represents unnecessary expense.
And biology always seeks efficiency.
Not only do we stop moving our muscles
When talking about sedentarism, we usually think only of the muscles.
But much more happens.
Every time we spend hours sitting, the variety of movements that the body performs decreases.
The hips spend a lot of time flexed.
The ankles barely explore their full ranges.
The toes participate less.
The spine changes position little.
The eyes remain fixed for long periods on a screen.
Even the breathing tends to become more shallow.
The problem is not being seated.
The problem is staying too long without changing.
Our body is designed for variability.
Not for prolonged immobility.
Moving is feeding the nervous system
Every step provides information.
Every change of direction.
Every step.
Every uneven terrain.
Every turn of the head.
Every small imbalance.
All of this keeps the dialogue between the body and the brain active.
When that conversation decreases for hours, days, or years, the nervous system loses opportunities to continue refining its movement strategies.
We do not stop learning.
We simply learn something else.
We learn to move less.
And the organism adapts exactly to that.
What does this have to do with barefoot?
More than it seems.
Not because a minimalist shoe will solve the consequences of sedentary behavior by itself.
That would be a less rigorous statement.
But yes because feet that can move, perceive, and participate actively help the organism receive richer sensory information during daily activities.
However, the best shoes in the world cannot replace something essential.
Movement.
Barefoot is a tool.
Walking is the stimulus.
And no tool works if we stop using the body for what it was designed for.
What I see every day in consultation
There are people who come in convinced that they need new insoles, different shoes, or a complex treatment.
And, of course, in many cases those tools are useful.
But I also observe something that frequently repeats.
When they manage to incorporate more movement into their daily lives, changes appear that go far beyond the feet.
They feel more agile.
More stable.
More secure.
With more confidence.
Because the body responds to use.
Not only to treatment.
No intervention can replace the effect of an organism that starts to move regularly again.
What you can do starting today
Don't think only about training.
Think about moving more.
Get up for a few minutes every hour.
Take the stairs whenever possible.
Walk while talking on the phone.
Vary your postures.
Look for small movements throughout the day.
They don't seem like big changes.
But for the nervous system, they represent hundreds of opportunities to keep learning.
Everyday movement adds up to much more than we imagine.
🔬 In a sentence
The body does not lose abilities because years go by. It loses them, to a large extent, because it stops needing them.
The most important idea
Age matters.
It would be absurd to deny it.
But biological aging and disuse are not exactly the same thing.
Our organism retains a huge capacity for adaptation throughout life.
Every step.
Every walk.
Every change of posture.
Every different movement.
It is a reminder for the body that this function remains important.
And the body tends to respond by taking care of what it still uses.
A question to reflect on
Think about any given day of your routine.
Does your body receive enough reasons to maintain its abilities… or is it learning, little by little, that it no longer needs them?
In the next article…
So far we have talked about movement, adaptation, and the nervous system.
But there is one concept that runs through all the chapters of this blog and that, however, is rarely explained clearly.
The variability.
Why walking exactly the same way thousands of times can end up being a problem?
And why changing the way we move slightly can help the body distribute loads better?
We will discover that, in biomechanics, always repeating the same movement is not always a synonym for efficiency.
Sometimes, the best strategy is precisely to have many different ways to solve the same challenge.