Upper body and ankle strategies compensate for reduced lateral stability at very slow walking speeds.

ABSTRACT: At the typical walking speeds of healthy humans, step placement seems to be the primary strategy to maintain gait stability, with ankle torques and upper body momentum providing additional compensation. The average walking speeds of populations with an increased risk of falling, however, are much slower and may require differing control strategies. The purpose of this study was to analyse mediolateral gait stability and the contributions of the different control strategies at very slow walking speeds. We analysed an open dataset including kinematics and kinetics from eight healthy subjects walking at speeds from 0.1 to 0.6 m s^-1 as well as a self-selected speed. As gait speed slowed, we found that the margin of stability (MoS) decreased linearly. Increased lateral excursions of

SUBMITTER: Best AN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7657866 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature