A Behavioral Mechanism of How Increases in Leg Strength Improve Old Adults' Gait Speed

Autor: Alway, Stephen, Uematsu, Azusa, Tsuchiya, Kazushi, Kadono, Norio, Kobayashi, Hirofumi, Kaetsu, Takamasa, Hortobágyi, Tibor, Suzuki, Shuji
Přispěvatelé: SMART Movements (SMART)
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2014
Předmět:
Zdroj: PLoS ONE, Vol 9, Iss 10, p e110350 (2014)
PLoS ONE, 9(10):e110350. PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
PLoS ONE
ISSN: 1932-6203
Popis: We examined a behavioral mechanism of how increases in leg strength improve healthy old adults' gait speed. Leg press strength training improved maximal leg press load 40% (p = 0.001) and isometric strength in 5 group of leg muscles 32% (p = 0.001) in a randomly allocated intervention group of healthy old adults (age 74, n = 15) but not in no-exercise control group (age 74, n = 8). Gait speed increased similarly in the training (9.9%) and control (8.6%) groups (time main effect, p = 0.001). However, in the training group only, in line with the concept of biomechanical plasticity of aging gait, hip extensors and ankle plantarflexors became the only significant predictors of self-selected and maximal gait speed. The study provides the first behavioral evidence regarding a mechanism of how increases in leg strength improve healthy old adults' gait speed.
Databáze: OpenAIRE