A behavioral mechanism of how increases in leg strength improve old adults′ gait speed

Azusa Uematsu; Kazushi Tsuchiya; Norio Kadono; Hirofumi Kobayashi; Takamasa Kaetsu; Tibor Hortobágyi; Shuji Suzuki

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0110350

A behavioral mechanism of how increases in leg strength improve old adults′ gait speed

Azusa Uematsu^*, Kazushi Tsuchiya, Norio Kadono, Hirofumi Kobayashi, Takamasa Kaetsu, Tibor Hortobágyi, Shuji Suzuki

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

27 Citations (Scopus)

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.

Original language	English
Article number	e110350
Journal	PLoS One
Volume	9
Issue number	10
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0110350
Publication status	Published - 2014 Oct 13

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Agricultural and Biological Sciences(all)
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology(all)
Medicine(all)

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AU - Kadono, Norio

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AU - Kaetsu, Takamasa

AU - Hortobágyi, Tibor

AU - Suzuki, Shuji

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A behavioral mechanism of how increases in leg strength improve old adults′ gait speed

Abstract

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