Altered biomechanical strategies of the paretic hip and knee joints during a step-up task.

Background: Stroke often leads to chronic motor impairments in the paretic lower limb that can constrain lower extremity movement and negatively impact the ability to navigate stairs or curbs. This cross-sectional study investigated the differences in hip and knee biomechanical strategies during a step-up task between five adults with hemiparetic stroke and five age-matched adults without stroke.

Methods: Participants were instructed to step up onto a 10.

Post-Stroke Adaptation of Lateral Foot Placement Coordination in Variable Environments.

Individuals with stroke often have difficulty modulating their lateral foot placement during gait, a primary strategy for maintaining lateral stability. Our purpose was to understand how individuals with and without stroke adapt their lateral foot placement when walking in an environment that alters center of mass (COM) dynamics and the mechanical requirement to maintain lateral stability. The treadmill walking environments included: 1) a Null Field- where no forces were applied, and 2) a Damping Field- where external forces opposed lateral COM velocity.

Body weight support impacts lateral stability during treadmill walking.

Body weight support (BWS) systems are a common tool used in gait rehabilitation. BWS systems may alter the requirements for an individual to actively stabilize by 1) providing lateral restoring forces that reduce the requirements for the nervous system to actively stabilize and 2) decreasing the stabilizing gravitational moment in the frontal plane, which could increase the requirements to actively stabilize. The goal of the current study was to quantify the interaction between BWS and lateral stability.

Importance of sagittal kick symmetry for underwater dolphin kick performance.

The purpose of this study was to determine how sagittal kick symmetry in the underwater dolphin kick (UDK) between the downkick and upkick phases is related to UDK performance. Fifteen adult male competitive swimmers ranging from provincial to international level were filmed performing three trials each of maximum effort UDK over 15m using an underwater video camera. Video frames were manually digitized and each subjects' single fastest trial was evaluated for between-subject comparisons.

The effect of drag suit training on 50-m freestyle performance.

Little research has evaluated the effects of drag suit training in swimming; these effects need to be explored further to optimize their use in training. For this 5-week training study, 18 subjects were divided evenly into 2 groups: control group and drag suit-trained group. Both groups performed weekly training routines that included 3 sprint sets.