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How best to walk? I know this is a mega popular topic, so if I've not seen some sticky on the subject, apologies and please refer me. This refers to middle-width 8 cm / 3 inch heels. Walking in heels makes me question every habit of how I walk and it's hard to know what's what. Basic things I'm doing OK are: heel first, walk with the feet a bit (or a lot) more in a straight line than normal, smaller, slower steps. So for so good. Beyond that it feels more graceful if in moving forward I roll over my big toe so my weight kind of drops forward, to be caught by the heel of the forward foot. This however feels like a lot of work for the big toe. My question is, is that normal? There are many Youtube tutorials. However many are very short and obvious, others are made by ballerinas and impossibly complex. Can anyone recommend a good one that's in between? Many thanks

Ah, a subject near and dear to my heart, and one which I have probably spent way too much time contemplating. Aside from a few fetish people, the most recent example being the "leaner" guy who posted elsewhere on this forum, I think we can all agree that the ideal situation is to appear as though walking in heels is completely effortless. I do agree that there are a ton of fairly useless videos out there, and a few that actually give horrible advice. As you have surely discovered, there are a few exponents out there who still advise walking toe-to-heel, something I defy somebody to actually accomplish. We'll make exceptions for ballerinas and professional Latin dancers, but it's a patently ridiculous assertion that anybody should ever walk this way. Nobody walks that way, even in bare feet. That being said, one definitely does not want to strike the ground aggressively with the heel, it is there to act as a stabilizer for just an instant until the ball of the foot can contact the ground. Ignore this advice at your peril! Don't ask me how I know. So it all comes down to what you really want to accomplish with your walk. It has been the subject of much debate just exactly how much femininity, if any, that a guy needs to emulate while walking in heels. I don't mind striving toward the more feminine looking walk, but more important to me is attempting to minimize my natural bowleggedness. Therefore, I spend a lot of effort trying to walk with my knees together, something that is not traditionally natural for me. This becomes more and more difficult the steeper you go, for reasons I cannot really explain. I see I have STILL not answered your question, and I cannot do so at this time, as I have run out of time. I gotta go to work. If there is still interest in the next couple of days, I will continue.

Yes having strong flexible ankles helps - I did lots of fencing in my youth and have retained a lot of that flexibility in my ankles ( probably thanks to many many thousand of miles of cycling since then )

I think it is also about building up your ankle strength. I saw a story in I think a New York Newspaper about how a Korean airline trained their flight attents to wear stilletos. It took me about 1 minute to go from 2 inch heels to 4 and 5 inch heels, but I had had years of ankle therapy after many ankle reconstructions.

I had a major failure yesterday. I flew yesterday and wore a pair of Cathy Jeans. Cathy Jeans were a non defunct company out of Argentina. One of my first pairs with about a 3 inch heel with gold trim. (Photo later.) One of my favorite heels, but being short I hadn't worn them in years. But I decided to wear them yesterday. First the heel cap disappear in about the same location as my other one did. But this was a one day trip, there and back in under 12 hours, so I NO luggage, i.e. no other shoes I could change into. Therefore I had to wear them in that condition all day. Then later I notice that the material cracking and delaminating. So sad. I will real liked these. I will take parts off of them and then donate them to HinH Heel Hill.