PURPOSE: This study examined the muscle activity while stepping over obstacles with various heights and widths to provide basic data for training and preventing falls. METHODS: Fifteen normal young adults (seven males and eight females) were recruited. The participants walked on a 5m walkway with six obstacles. The heights of obstacles were 0%, 10%, and 40% of the subject's leg length, and the width of the obstacles was 7cm and 14cm. The participants traversed the course twice per obstacle. The muscle activities of the soleus, tibialis anterior (TA), vastus medialis (VM), and vastus lateralis (VL) were measured using surface electromyography. A Mann-Whitney test and Kruskal-Wallis test were used to examine the differences between obstacles.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.