The contribution of the knee to the amount of gait variability

The aim of this study was to enhance understanding of human walking and provide insight into dysfunction. My hypothesis was that there would be a greater amount of step length, step width and step time variability, when walking with locked out knees, compared to freely moving knees. Participants walked on a declined treadmill at two declined (negative) slopes with conditions of freely moving knees and locked out knees. For the locked knees condition both knees were locked in full extension using a knee brace on each leg. Participants walked on the declined treadmill for 5 minutes for each condition. Kinematics were recorded for each participant who walked at their preferred walking speed. Data was collected using reflective markers and a motion capture system. The variability of step length, step width and step time was calculated using standard deviation. When going from freely moving knees to locked out knees there was a general trend of an increase in the gait variability for all the variables at both slopes except for the step width variability at the lower slope. This strongly supported the hypothesis that the overall gait variability would increase when moving from a freely moving knee to a locked out knee