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- Title
A Behavioral Mechanism of How Increases in Leg Strength Improve Old Adults’ Gait Speed.
- Authors
Uematsu, Azusa; Tsuchiya, Kazushi; Kadono, Norio; Kobayashi, Hirofumi; Kaetsu, Takamasa; Hortobágyi, Tibor; Suzuki, Shuji
- Abstract
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.
- Subjects
LEG muscles; HEALTH of older people; MUSCLE strength testing; STRENGTH training -- Physiological aspects; EXERCISE physiology
- Publication
PLoS ONE, 2014, Vol 9, Issue 10, p1
- ISSN
1932-6203
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0110350