Investigating postural equilibrium of individuals with different athletic skill levels

Abstract

Human body is an inherently unstable unless human postural control system continuously maintains body balance and prevents it from falling. The capabilities of this system may vary in individuals depending on their motor skill, pathology cognitive load and task difficulties. This study aims to investigate human postural control of three groups of individuals with different athletic skill levels. These groups consisted of dancers, undergraduate students with active life style (five to eight hours of exercise a week) and students with less active lifestyle (less than two hours of exercise a week). Four experiments were conducted to examine the stability of these individuals and to determine their postural control on tandem stance with eyes open and eyes closed on a force plate and on a dynamic platform. The experimental results revealed that all subject exhibited poor postural control when standing on the dynamic platform, particularly in the absence of visual cue. They also indicated that dancers and students with active lifestyle generally have better postural control than students with less active lifestyle.

A multi-sensing physical therapy assessment for children with cerebral palsy

“…Several multi-sensing solutions that are designed to give support to stimulation of motion and to provide the balance aid during the gait rehabilitation process, are reported in literature [8][9][10][11][12], however are less or not reported systems for cerebral palsy monitoring. Several metrics can be mentioned as a sensing systems associated with the postural analysis of the body and its static and dynamic balance such as, center of pressure position and trajectory pressure that were considered in different practical approaches [13][14][15].…”