Characteristics of Stride Behavior During Treadmill Walking and Stationary Stepping

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Christopher K. Rhea, Associate Professor (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/

Abstract: Much has been learned about the characteristics of gait in overground and treadmill walking. However, there are many contexts in which overground or treadmill walking might not be possible, such as in home-based physical therapy. In those cases, a surrogate task to index gait behavior would be a valuable tool. Thus, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the stride behavior characteristics of stationary stepping compared with treadmill walking. Healthy young adults (N = 10) preformed two 15-minute tasks: (1) treadmill walking and (2) stationary stepping. Several stride behavior characteristics were recorded, including the number of strides taken, minimum and maximum knee angle, stride interval mean, stride interval standard deviation, and detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) alpha of the stride interval time series. The results showed that stride behavior was similar between tasks when examined at the group level. However, when individual level analyses were used to examine the reliability of each metric between tasks, poor reliability was observed in most metrics, indicating that stationary stepping may not be an appropriate surrogate task for overground or treadmill walking. These results are discussed in the context of a gait dynamics framework, with attention to task constraints that may have influenced the findings.

Additional Information

Publication
Journal of Applied Biomechanics, 30(4), 534-541
Language: English
Date: 2014
Keywords
gait, locomotion, dynamics, detrended fluctuation analysis

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