I'm wondering - can you tell if someone has closed hips from the way they walk? How they put their feet down, or how they move? Or are closed and open hips something that only affects skating?

I don't think you can tell that people have closed hips from their walk, because in general people walk with their feet parallel, meaning they do close their hips.

Sometimes you'll see ballet dancers walk with their feet turned out in a "duck walk" - which results from having trained their hips to remain very opened (but is also sometimes an exaggeration, because they see the duck walk as a badge of honor of having good turn out).

I really can't think of much besides skating and ballet that closed hips makes tough. And compared to the challenges having closed hips presents to ballet, it really isn't nearly as important to skating.

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I think you can tell many times. People with very closed hips tend to walk just a bit pigeon toed. I do it all the time, and find myself standing that way also. I have to think to straighten out. I see people walking with toes out a lot, which is because of very open hips. Some people with relatively open hips may walk with feet straight because they need to stretch to get the turn out.

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