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

Alway, Stephen, Uematsu, Azusa, Tsuchiya, Kazushi, Kadono, Norio, Kobayashi, Hirofumi, Kaetsu, Takamasa, Hortobágyi, Tibor and Suzuki, Shuji (2014) A Behavioral Mechanism of How Increases in Leg Strength Improve Old Adults’ Gait Speed. PLoS ONE, 9 (10). e110350. ISSN 1932-6203

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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.

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