Want to avoid getting mugged? The way you walk makes a big difference.

Several studies have used prisoners with a history of muggings to watch the way people walk. Walking a certain way makes you vulnerable. I tried to find visuals to help explain, but had difficulty. The only one is at the bottom.

The short version... http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131104-how-muggers-size-up-your-walk/all

A detailed explanation... http://www.scribd.com/doc/35330362/Attracting-Assault-Victims-Nonverbal-Cues-Grayson-Stein

Quote :

The typical victim as perceived by the criminal respondents in this study would have either a long or a short stride, but not a medium stride. This is not a matter of specifically measured length in feet and inches, but rather is expressed in terms of bodily dimensions and how the leg moves, comfortably, from the hip joint when the weight is shifted and the leg extended. Thus, a long stride for a person who is five feet tall might be a short stride for someone who is six feet tall. This typical victim would probably move his or her body so that body weight would shift laterally, diagonally, or with an up/down movement. He or she would tend to walk gesturally rather than posturally. In terms of whole body movement, the typical victim would move unilaterally, one side at a time, rather than contralaterally, moving left arm and right leg and then right arm and left leg. (Even those victims who did move contralaterally combined this movement with upper and lower body parts moving against each other rather than moving together.) Finally, the victim would tend to lift his or her feet while walking rather than using a more fluid swing movement.  The picture drawn of the typical non-victim is a completely different one.  The typical non-victim would use a medium stride, shift weight in a three-dimensional pattern (as if he or she were executing a “figure 8”), walk posturally, move contralaterally, and swing his or her feet. The major difference between victim and non-victim as perceived by criminal respondents and as described by the Labananalysis notation seems to be the difference that exists between postural and gestural movement. The terms posture and gesture refer to how much of the body participates in a movement. In postural movement, the initiation of the movement comes from the body center, while gestural movement is initiated from the body’s periphery.

Thus, gestural movement is discrete, separated, and limited to individual body parts. Postural movement, in contrast, always involves not only the observed or obvious movement of a specific body part, but affects and is reflected in the total body.  The prime difference between perceived victim and non-victim groups,therefore, seems to revolve around a “wholeness” or consistency of movement.  Non-victims have an organized quality about their body movements, and they function comfortably within the context of their own bodies. In contrast, the gestural movement of victims seems to communicate inconsistency and dissonance.

Condon and Ogden have called this phenomenon “interactional synchrony.” Persons who communicate with each other tend to “move to a similar beat,” while a lack of synchrony is found, for example, in autistic children.  The perceived victims are non-synchronous or anti-synchronous within themselves. Instead of body parts working to complement each other, as in a contralateral walk, the potential victim’s body parts seem to move against each other, as in the non-fluidity of a unilateral body movement or the lifting rather than graceful swinging of the feet.

Contralateral... notice on the right side, when the leg goes foreward, the arm goes back... and the opposite stuff is concurrently happening on the left side.

Very interesting. My gait is a little messed up since my knee and tibia got broken, sometimes not as bad as others.

riceme wrote:

Very interesting. My gait is a little messed up since my knee and tibia got broken, sometimes not as bad as others.

You're TOAST then...

Eric wrote:

riceme wrote:

Very interesting. My gait is a little messed up since my knee and tibia got broken, sometimes not as bad as others.

You're TOAST then...

HA! I live in a Constitutional Carry state now, E! Watch out, muggers and riffraff!

Ah heck, Riceme, you just need to learn how to strut with a limp, like I do. ;-)

Melissa wrote:

Ah heck, Riceme, you just need to learn how to strut with a limp, like I do.  ;-)

Dayum gurrrl, who said I don't strut??