Effect of Heel Height and Speed on Gait, and the Relationship Among the Factors and Gait Variables

Abstract

Objectiv e:This paper investigates gait changes according to different heel heights and speeds, and the interaction between the effects of the heel height and the speed during walking on stride parameters and joint angles. Furthermore, the relationship among heel height, speed and gait variables is investigated using linear regression. Background:Gait changes by heel height or speed have been studied respectively, but has not been reported whether there is an interaction effect between heel height and speed. It would be necessary to understand how gait changes when a person wears heels in different heights at various speeds, for example, high-heeled walking at fast speed, since it may cause unusual gait patterns and musculoskeletal disorders.Method: Ten females were asked to walk at five fixed cadences (94, 106, 118, 130 and 142 steps/min.) wearing three shoes with different heel heights (1, 5.4 and 9.8cm). Nineteen gait variables were analyzed for stride parameters and joint angles using two-way repeated measure analysis of variance and regression analysis. Results:Both heel height and speed affect movement of ankle, knee, spine and elbow joint, as well as stride length and Double/Single support time ratio. However, there is no significant interaction effect between heel height and speed. The regression result shows linear relationships of gait variables with heel height and speed. Conclusion:Heel height and speed independently affect stride parameters and joint angles without a significant interaction, so the gait variables are linearly amplified or diminished by the two factors.Application: Walking in high heels at fast speed should be careful for musculoskeletal disorders, since the amplified movement of knee and spine joint can lead to increased moment. Also, the result might give insight for animators or engineers to generate walking motion with high heels at various speeds.

Estimation of Knee Joint Angle Using Textile Capacitive Sensor and Artificial Neural Network Implementing with Three Shoe Types at Two Gait Speeds: A Preliminary Investigation

“…Typically, gait disorders or abnormalities could happen at any stage of the GC. Example, wearing high heels decreased knee flexion during the swing phase [ 40 ], resulting in a stiff-knee gait that may present as a gait abnormity. It is essential to measure the joint angles for the whole GC for further analysis.…”

The effect of subject measurement error on joint kinematics in the conventional gait model: Insights from the open-source pyCGM tool using high performance computing methods

“…In the case of kinematic analysis, recording motions at high sampling rates over long periods of time can result in a significant amount of data to be processed, suggesting an important use-case for HPC and parallelization solutions. For example, a study on the effect of high heels on gait, in which 10 subjects walked at 5 cadences with 3 different heel heights, resulted a total of 150 trials to be analyzed [ 25 ]. For analyses of dynamic stability during gait, experiments often require considerably more data.…”