Abstract
When losing balance, upper-body movements serve as mechanical aids to regain stability. However, it remains unclear how these movements contribute to dynamic stability during recovery from a lateral loss of balance while walking with arm restriction. We aimed to 1) quantify the effect of arm restriction on gait stability and upper-body velocities, and 2) characterize upper-body kinematic strategies in response to lateral surface translations under different arm restriction conditions. Healthy adults were exposed to lateral surface translations while walking on a computerized treadmill under three conditions: ‘free arms’, ‘1-arm restricted’ and, ‘2-arms restricted’. Dynamic stability and upper-body velocities for the first step after perturbation onset were extracted. We found decreased dynamic stability in the sagittal plane and increased trunk velocity in the ‘2-arm restricted’ condition compared to the ‘free arms’ condition. Head and trunk movements in the mediolateral plane were in opposite directions in 44.31% of responses. Additionally, significant trunk velocities were observed in the opposite direction to the perturbation-induced loss of balance. Our results support the contribution of increased upper-body velocities to balance responses following arm-restricted walking perturbations and suggest that the ‘2-arm restricted’ condition may be utilized as a perturbation-based balance training, focusing on head and trunk responses.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Manuscript was shortened and some of the analyses have changed to control for some variables.
