Abstract
Lateral stepping is a motor task that is widely used in everyday life to modify the base of support, change direction, and avoid obstacles. Anticipatory Postural Adjustments (APAs) are often analyzed to describe postural preparation prior to forward stepping, however, little is known about lateral stepping. The aim of the study is to characterize APAs preceding lateral steps and to investigate how these are affected by footwear and lower limb preference. Twenty-two healthy young participants performed a lateral step using both their preferred and non-preferred leg in both barefoot and shod conditions. APA spatiotemporal parameters (size, duration, and speed) along both the anteroposterior and mediolateral axes were obtained through force plate data. APAs preceding lateral stepping showed typical patterns both along the anteroposterior and mediolateral axis. RM-ANOVA highlighted a significant effect of footwear only on medio-lateral APAs amplitude (p = 0.008) and velocity (p = 0.037). No differences were found for the limb preference. APAs in lateral stepping presented consistent features in the sagittal component, regardless of limb/shoe factors. Interestingly, the study observed that footwear induced an increase in the medio-lateral APAs size and velocity, highlighting the importance of including this factor when studying lateral stepping.
Highlights
Anticipatory Postural Adjustments (APAs) are postural movements that precede most voluntary movements and are produced to create favorable conditions for the latter [1]
In forward step/gait initiation for instance, APAs move the center of pressure (CoP) toward the stepping leg and backwards, while the center of mass (CoM) moves toward the stance leg, and forward [5,6]
Each of these components of the APAs that precede a step, the mediolateral (ML) and the anteroposterior (AP) one, have been linked to different functions: the ML component has been classically associated with stability [7], whereas the AP one has been associated with performance [8]
Summary
Anticipatory Postural Adjustments (APAs) are postural movements that precede most voluntary movements and are produced to create favorable conditions for the latter [1]. APAs are specific for the movement they precede and are modulated based on afferent information and environmental factors [2,3] Their role is two-fold: to maintain the body’s equilibrium and to facilitate/control the movement [1,4]. Little attention has been directed toward steps in non-forward directions [14,15,16], even though between 10% and 50% of steps performed everyday fall within this category [17] Despite their paucity, studies investigating non-forward steps (e.g., diagonal, lateral stepping) relevantly contributed to our understanding of postural control, highlighting how the performance of these tasks may unveil biomechanical differences between pathological and healthy populations [18]
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