Lateral rhythmic unipedal stepping in younger, middle-aged, and older adults.

Purpose: Voluntary and protective stepping performance changes with age. This has implications for the problem of falls in older adults. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of metronome paced stepping practice on self-selected preferred rhythmic unipedal stepping performance in the medial-lateral direction among younger, middle-aged and older adults.

Methods: Thirty-two healthy adult subjects (0 younger, 0 middle-aged, 2 older) participated. They performed rhythmic lateral stepping with their dominant limb at their preferred pace before and after 6 trials of metronome-paced stepping.

Results: Older subjects had longer stride periods than young and middle-aged subjects prior to metronome pacing. Older subjects exhibited a 25% decrease in preferred stride period between pre- and postpacing trials. This is compared to a 5% and 11 % decrease exhibited by middle-aged and younger subjects respectively. Preferred stride period was similar for older subjects as compared to younger and middle-aged subjects after paced practice. Modification of the stride period occurred mainly during the stance phase of rhythmic stepping.

Conclusions: Comparable stride periods across groups after pacing suggest stepping performance is modifiable. Brief intervals of paced stepping may offer older adults a short-term benefit to stepping performance.