I agree with a caveat: walking posture. If walking feels tiring or
unpleasant it’s likely that one doesn’t have a good walking posture. I’ve been walking wrong a big chunk of my life until I re-learned the right way, in my 40s! It’s wonderful to walk now and don’t get tired and achy like i used to. Bad habits get so ingrained in us that it becomes extremely tricky to correct them but it is very possible to fix these and the reward very high, I have a better posture, more energy and am better in a shape than when i was younger and any back issues i had nearly vanished.
No physiotherapist could really help me as I wasn’t injured and my walk was’t obviously wrong, they all sortof dismissed me. What helped was ballance exercises, learning how to use skeletal muscles and paying attention to the whole aspect of walking: in the end it should feel effortless. I was also stepping on the foot wrong, was applying too much pressure on the front of the foot and leaning the trunk forward a few degrees more than now. The rest was trial and error and it took a while to fine tune it but as soon as I found the sweet spot - and you know it, it feels just right and you’re relaxed - the rest is making this a habit so you don’t really have to consciously think about it and it happens naturally. I also fixed a lot of static postures such as sitting on a chair, etc I sometimes fall into the old postures but now can adjust accordingly
What I forgot to mention was stretches which do help but if the motion isn’t fixed the tense muscles tense back as they try to compensate for the incorrect movement.
There are multiple paths to this and yoga could be one of them. Im just a stubborn self lerner and went through a lot of trial and error. At the beginning i studied muscular imballances and did a lot of strenghtening and stretching but that didn’t help too much as my bad habits were reverting all the progress and certain muscles would tense up and others wouldnt fire. Once i figured out the correct posture it all fell into place
1. Slow jogs with the only goal being getting my footstrike under the hips. This fixed the rolling/lurching I had developed in adolescence.
2. Runner's supplements. This did a lot to reduce pain and stiffness. Magnesium in particular really made a difference.
3. Strength and mobility training. Yoga or calisthenics both work for this: the main limitation in both walking and running postures is in being able to swing the hips, shoulders and knees fluidly.
