Elsevier

Gait & Posture

Volume 25, Issue 3, March 2007, Pages 385-392
Gait & Posture

The effect of gait speed and gender on perceived exertion, muscle activity, joint motion of lower extremity, ground reaction force and heart rate during normal walking

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gaitpost.2006.05.008Get rights and content

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the effect of speed and gender on subjective perceived exertion, muscle activity, joint motion of lower extremity, vertical ground reaction force and heart rate during barefoot walking. Thirty healthy young adults, 15 females and 15 males, participated in this study. The Borg CR-10 scale was applied to evaluate the perceived exertion of whole body and 10 local areas. Objective measurements included electromyography (EMG), joint motion, vertical ground reaction force (VGRF) and heart rate. The results indicate that walking speed had significant influence on perceived exertion of whole body, as well as the buttock, rear thigh, front thigh and rear shank areas (p < 0.05). Increased walking speed caused significant increase in the muscle activities of lumbar erector spinae, biceps femoris, and medial gastrocnemius, lumbar motion, as well as the vertical ground reaction force in the loading response and mid-stance phases. For gender effect, females showed significantly higher tibialis anterior muscle activity, ankle motion, vertical ground reaction force and average heart rate than males. Some systematic relations among the physiological, kinematics, kinetics and psychophysical responses were found for interpreting gait performance.

Introduction

Walking is a serial consequence, which coordinates multiple systems simultaneously including the neurological, sensorimotor, musculoskeletal, and visual–vestibular systems. Normal gait profiles can be applied as the references for disability assessment, intervention and treatment planning. Many studies have been devoted to the research of gait patterns from physiological, biomechanical, kinematics and kinetics perspectives and provided clinical information about the gait and posture. But information about the relevance between gait pattern and psychophysical responses is lacking.

Perceived exertion is the perception of the total feeling of exertion which combines all sensation and feeling of physical stress, effort, and fatigue. Rating of perceived exertion (RPE) scale has been widely applied to evaluate the relationship between the psychophysical responses and the physiological criterion [1]. Borg CR-10 which is a 10-point category rating scale has demonstrated its validity and reliability in evaluating different physical tasks [2]. The reliability of the Borg CR-10 in examining the extension of lumbar spine has been reported to have high intra-class correlation (ICC = 0.84) and the ICC in resistance exercise is 0.88–0.95 [3], [4], [5]. For running and walking task, there are significant correlations between Borg CR-10 and various physiological criteria, for the oxygen uptake (% VO2max) the r value is 0.41–0.60 (p < 0.001) and for heart rate (beats min−1) the r value is 0.26–0.52 (p < 0.01) [6]. The weighted mean validity coefficients between Borg CR-10 and heart rate is 0.62, 0.57 for blood lactate, 0.64 for %VO2max, 0.63 for VO2, 0.61 for ventilation and 0.72 for respiration rate [7].

For walking speed, it has been reported that human walking with the speed range of 1.23–1.25 m/s (about 4.5 km/h) is most efficient from the energy consumption perspective [8]. Increasing walking speed leads to increased muscle activity in the lower extremities and changes in the temporal and distance characteristics of gait. Further, the study on the effect of walking speed on heel strike initiated shock waves indicated that increasing walking speed tends to contribute more dynamic loading to the musculoskeletal system [9]. Finally, the vertical and horizontal ground reaction forces tend to be affected by walking speed, especially in the loading response and mid-stance phases [10].

Gender is also a factor influencing movement patterns during walking and running. It has been reported that female subjects have higher hip angular velocity, greater hip internal rotation, and hip adduction than males during running [11]. This suggests that some intrinsic characteristics such as skeletal alignment, muscle strength and anthropometric parameters may contribute to the gender differences in gait performance. In conclusion, understanding of the interactions between psychophysical, physiological, kinematics, and kinetics parameters during normal walking would be necessary for interpreting gait performance.

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of speed and gender on perceived exertion, muscle activity, joint motion of lower extremities, vertical ground reaction force and heart rate during normal walking. The Borg CR-10 was applied to rate the perceived exertion overall and locally in some areas of the lower limbs.

Section snippets

Subjects

Thirty healthy young adults, 15 females and 15 males, participated in this study. None of the subjects had a history of neurological or musculoskeletal disorders. Basic information including age, body height and weight were collected from each subject. The anthropometric data including thigh and shank length, knee width and foot dimensions were also measured. The average age of the 30 subjects was 24.8 years. The average height was 166.0 cm, and average weight was 57.6 kg.

Experimental design

In order to reduce the

Speed effect

Table 1 displays the mean and standard deviation of age, body height, body weight, cadence and relevant anthropometric data by walking group. Each walking group had 10 subjects (5 males and 5 females). There is no significant difference in average age, body height, body weight and anthropometric data among the three walking groups. Cadence was significantly different among the three walking groups (p < 0.05). As expected, the cadence for the 5 km/h group (131.8 steps/min) was significantly higher

Speed effect

The results of this study indicate that the RPE of the whole body and specific areas including the buttock, rear thigh, front thigh, rear shank, and the EMG of lumbar erector spinae, biceps femoris, medial gastrocnemius as well as the lumbar motion increased with increasing walking speed. When walking at 5 km/h, there was a significant increase in the RPE in the buttock, rear thigh, front thigh, the muscle activity of lumbar erector spinae, biceps femoris, medial gastrocnemius and the lumbar

Conclusion

The results of this study indicate that walking speed had significant influence on the perceived exertion, muscle activity, kinematic and kinetic measurements. The results indicated possible associations between physiological, kinematic, kinetic, and psychophysical responses.

With respect to gender effect, females adopted a different walking strategy to increase the step length and keep up with the predetermined walking speed, and thus generated a significantly higher muscle activity in some

Conflict of interest

There is no conflict of interests in terms of financial and personal relationships with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work, all within 3 years of beginning the work submitted.

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