Gait Range Of Motion In Older Adults After A Six-week Walking Intervention With Gait Trainers.

Abstract

INTRODUCTION:The neuromuscular system assists with ankle stabilization during unexpected perturbation of the ankle. However, few studies have investigated the neuromuscular response to sudden ankle perturbation during gait. A deeper understanding of the neuromuscular response to dynamic ankle perturbations could provide insight into ankle sprain injury avoidance strategies. PURPOSE: To compare lower extremity muscle activity across perturbed and normal walking gait conditions. METHODS: 11 healthy volunteers walked along a walkway embedded with two trapdoors that elicit sudden inversion, or inversion and plantarflexion. Participants performed trials of walking gait during normal walking (NW), inversion (INV), and inversion/plantarflexion (PF) conditions. EMG was collected on the dominant peroneus longus, tibialis anterior, soleus, gluteus medius, and contralateral gluteus medius. Peak EMG (pEMG) was calculated in the 200ms after heel strike of the dominant limb. Data were normalized to the maximal voluntary contraction for each muscle. Repeated measures ANOVAs assessed differences in peak activation of each muscle across conditions. RESULTS: No significant differences in pEMG were found across conditions for any of the muscles [