• Find a Place to Sit
  
• Put your Trousers and Knee Pads on
  
• Strap in your Feet
  
• Strap in your Legs
  
• Stand up and go
  

Try to find somewhere high up where you can sit and strap on the stilts. Something like a wall or a litter bin should be fine.

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Safety first, put on your knee pads. Make sure they are properly fitted and they will not come loose as you are walking. DO NOT attempt to go stiltwalking without knee pads!

If you are planning on wearing stilt trousers you may have to put these on first. It's a pain to discover that after straping yourself into your stilts that you can't reach your feet to put the trousers on!

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One of the most important things to consider when putting on the stilts is the position of the foot in on the foot plate. If your foor is only a few centimetre's out of place it will effect the distribution of weight and can make walking on the stilts more difficult than need be. Unfortunatly the exact position is something you will only discover after some trial and error but use this diagram as a starting point.

(A) The toe of your shoe should be aligned with the tip of the foot plate.

(B) The front of your shin should align with the back of the Leg Brace.

(C) Don't worry about your heel not being on the foot plate, your weight is carried on the ball of the foot.

As mentioned, most of your weight is carried on the ball of your foot. If you feel like you are walking on your heels then move your foot back a few centimetres and see if that helps (this moves the ball of your foot closer to the centre of the stilt leg and the centre of balance).

Strap in your Foot

1. Pass strap diagonally over foot then through heel strap.	2. Pass strap over front of heel then again through heel strap.	3. Pass strap back over foot towards ladder lock.	4. Fasten the ladder lock and pull strap tight.

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Now fasten the calf straps. Simply clip the two ends together and tighten the strap as far as they will comfortably go. The strap should be as tight as possible without causing pain. Depending on the thickness of the strap you may find that it comes loose when walking. there are a couple of solutions to this problem. Firstly you can put the buckles on "the wrong way" so that the excess strap is facing in towards your leg. When the strap is tightened this will make it harder for the buckle to slip. Secondly, use parcel tape! Ordinary parcel tape can be wrapped round the entire stilt leg to secure the buckle.

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If you are on a suitably high surface then you should be able to just stand up, and hey presto you're stilt walking. Now look at the section on walking to learn how to stilt walk.

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