Shape and Magnitude of Lower Extremity Kinetics Changed Steps Before Gait Transition During Increasing Speed Induced Walk-to-Run Transition

<p> <p id="x-x-x-P12"> <strong> Purpose: </strong> The aim of this study was to investigate lower limb joint moments/ power patterns during gait transitions with continuously increased walking speeds. <p id="x-x-x-P13"> <strong> Methods: </strong> Gait transitions were tested with thirteen college aged subjects. The kinetics data was collected using the treadmill and 8 digital cameras. Inverse dynamics was employed to estimate sagittal plane ankle, knee, and hip joint moments / power for the last five steps before transition. <p id="x-x-x-P14"> <strong> Results: </strong> Ensemble curves of joint moments/ powers data presented in Figure 1. The most observable changes occurred at the last step before transition, where 1) the peak plantarflexor moment increased and happened earlier during the stance phase, along with 2). the vanish of the dorsalflexor moments which commonly happens at the beginning of the stance phase. There are three knee joint moment peaks can be observed during the stance in the middle panel. The first extensor peak increased slightly during the first four steps displayed here where the other two remain largely unchanged. The first peak increased to almost twice as observed in the previous steps, with the other two almost vanish during last step before gait transition. Hip joint moments remained steady for the first four steps presented here. But hip joint flexor moments reduced significantly during the last step before changed to run. Joint power data will not be presented here with the limited spaces allow for this abstract but they do support the same trends observed with the joint moments. <p id="x-x-x-P15"> <strong> Conclusions: </strong> We have observed transition specific non-linear joint kinetic behavior in this study. Sagittal plane joint moments/ power changed in shape and magnitudes during the five steps approach transition, especially the last step before transition. </p> </p> </p> </p></p>