Measures of paraspinal muscle performance do not predict initial trunk kinematics after tripping

Practicing recovery from a simulated trip improves recovery kinematics after an actual trip

“…Overall, the results showed beneficial effects, including decreased maximum trunk angle, decreased the time to reach maximum trunk angle, and increased minimum hip height during the initial step over the obstacle. Arresting the forward rotation of the trunk has been shown to be a key factor in successfully recovering from a trip [18,19], and raising the minimum hip height improves the chances of the initial recovery step clearing the obstacle for a successful recovery [17].…”

“…These measures focused mainly on the importance of controlling the trunk segment after tripping in order to prevent a fall [18,19], and were based on whole body COM estimated from anthropometric measurements [20], trunk angle defined as the angle between the trunk segment (mid-point of the shoulders to the L3L4 joint) and vertical, and trunk angular velocity calculated as the time derivative of trunk angle. These measures included: (1) anterior-posterior distance between the COM and stepping leg's ankle marker at the instant of foot contact of the first step over the obstacle; (2) trunk angle at the instant of foot contact of the first step over the obstacle; (3) trunk angular velocity at the instant of foot contact of the first step over the obstacle; (4) maximum (forward) trunk angle over the first two recovery steps; (5) maximum trunk angular velocity over the first two recovery steps; (6) minimum hip height over the first two recovery steps determined from the average height of markers on the greater trochanters and normalized to percent body height (BH); (7) time to maximum trunk angle from trip onset; and (8) time to maximum trunk angular velocity from trip onset.…”

Recovery from forward loss of balance in young and older adults using the stepping strategy

“…However the trunk, due to its large relative mass, also has the potential to substantially influence the position and velocity of the body's CoM and hence the MoS. Trunk kinematics have been reported to discriminate between fallers and non-fallers during recovery from trip [19,20] and slip [21] perturbations (see Grabiner et al [2] for review). For example, older fallers exhibit greater trunk flexion than aged-matched nonfallers during recovery from an induced trip [20].…”

Push-off reactions in recovery after tripping discriminate young subjects, older non-fallers and older fallers

“…As tripping is one of the main causes for falls [2][3][4], several authors have investigated recovery reactions after tripping in young adults [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. Pavol and co-workers investigated recovery after tripping in a group of older adults [14][15][16][17][18].…”