Authors: Elju E Thomas Giuseppe De Vito Andrea Macaluso
Publish Date: 2007/03/10
Volume: 100, Issue: 3, Pages: 293-299
Abstract
Walking on a treadmill with Body Weight Unloading BWU which has been successfully used on patients with neurological conditions may also be used as a training tool to increase walking speed in healthy individuals We hypothesised that BWU enables individuals to walk at a faster speed on a treadmill than they would do in normal gravity conditions without increasing their effort and with an increase in both stride length SL and stride frequency SF Oxygen uptake heart rate HR SL and SF of six older women mean ± SD 70 ± 4 years and six young women 26 ± 3 years were measured during treadmill walking at three selfselected speeds comfortable slow and fast and three different percentages of BWU 0 20 and 40 No significant differences were found between the groups in any selfselected walking speeds and any of the other variables The combined data of the two groups showed that walking energy cost per unit of time WECt and HR at fast speed with 40 of BWU 258 ± 60 J kg−1 min−1 and 95 ± 15 beats min−1 respectively were similar to those measured at comfortable speed with no BWU 273 ± 47 J kg−1 min−1 and 101 ± 16 beats min−1 respectively Also SL and SF increased significantly with speed P 0017 at any given percentage of BWU The results suggest that 40 of BWU enables both young and older women to walk at a faster speed on a treadmill without increasing their effort and with an increase in both SL and SF
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