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Contribution of arm movements to balance recovery after tripping in older adults

View ORCID ProfileSjoerd M. Bruijn, View ORCID ProfileLizeth H. Sloot, View ORCID ProfileIdsart Kingma, View ORCID ProfileMirjam Pijnappels
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.03.454896
Sjoerd M. Bruijn
1Department of Human Movement Sciences, Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Amsterdam Movement Sciences, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, First Affiliated Hospital, Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, Fujian, PR China
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  • For correspondence: s.m.bruijn@gmail.com
Lizeth H. Sloot
3Optimization, Robotics and Biomechanics Lab, Institut für Technische Informatik (ZITI), Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany
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Idsart Kingma
1Department of Human Movement Sciences, Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Amsterdam Movement Sciences, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Mirjam Pijnappels
1Department of Human Movement Sciences, Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Amsterdam Movement Sciences, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Abstract

Falls are common in daily life, often caused by trips and slips and, particularly in older adults, with serious consequences. Although arm movements play an important role in balance control, there is limited research into the role of arm movements during balance recovery after tripping in older adults. We investigated how older adults use their arms to recover from a trip and the difference in the effects of arm movements between fallers (n=5) and non-fallers (n=11).

Sixteen older males and females (69.7±2.3 years) walked along a walkway and were occasionally tripped over suddenly appearing obstacles. We analysed the first trip using a biomechanical model based on full-body kinematics and force-plate data to calculate whole body orientation during the trip and recovery phase. With this model, we simulated the effects of arm movements at foot-obstacle impact and during trip recovery on body orientation.

Apart from an increase in sagittal plane forward body rotation at touchdown in fallers, we found no significant differences between fallers and non-fallers in the effects of arm movements on trip recovery. Like earlier studies in young adults, we found that arm movements during the recovery phase had most favourable effects in the transverse plane: by delaying the transfer of angular momentum of the arms to the body, older adults rotated the tripped side more forward thereby allowing for a larger recovery step. Older adults that are prone to falling might improve their balance recovery after tripping by learning to prolong ongoing arm movements.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Footnotes

  • Revision based on peer-review suggestions from Journal of Biomechanics., minor revisions, round 2

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
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Posted January 21, 2022.
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Contribution of arm movements to balance recovery after tripping in older adults
Sjoerd M. Bruijn, Lizeth H. Sloot, Idsart Kingma, Mirjam Pijnappels
bioRxiv 2021.08.03.454896; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.03.454896
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Contribution of arm movements to balance recovery after tripping in older adults
Sjoerd M. Bruijn, Lizeth H. Sloot, Idsart Kingma, Mirjam Pijnappels
bioRxiv 2021.08.03.454896; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.03.454896

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