The Influence of Walking Speed and Gender on Biomechanic Analysis

Abstract

Walking speed is a reliable indicator in most clinical applications and it has become the sixth functional vital sign of human body. Gait speed measurement has been widely used in physical therapy and rehabilitation activity as it provides insight for evaluation of performance and pathological gait. Changes of walking speed eventually affect the gait patterns in terms of vertical ground reaction force (VGRF), step length, stride length cadence and joint moment. Besides, previous studies have shown that gender is one of the main factors affecting walking gait, gender is also one of the consideration in designing prosthesis. Therefore, it is important to understand the impacts of different walking speed and gender on gait analysis. The objective of this study is to determine the effects of different percentage of preferred walking speed (PPWS) and gender on biomechanics performance of young adults. 15 males and 15 females been recruited to perform the gait analysis. Results shows that as the PPWS increase, step length, stride length, cadence, VGRF and knee joint moment are significantly increased with 100% PPWS as baseline. Male and female demonstrated similar trend in changes but females exhibited significantly higher step length, stride length, cadence, VGRF and knee joint moment. Thus, we conclude that walking speed and gender have significant effect in walking gait and the result provide important insight for evaluation of pathological gait.