Optimal Athlete Performance Through Gait: How It Works

Learn How to Optimize Athletic Performance by Understanding Gait

Like breathing through our noses, we take walking for granted until it’s compromised. Once it is, we miss it. Too many athletes have discovered this when an accident on the field or chronic overuse of a limb results in a debilitating injury. If we want to keep athletes on the field or the court, we must do everything to maintain their good health.

One of the best things we can do is achieve optimal athlete performance through gait.

Human gait analysis has come a long way in the past several decades. Today, we know more than we ever have about complex factors such as weight shifting and loading in the foot zones. When we add data-gathering and analysis of gait, we get a very accurate picture of an athlete’s movement – and are, therefore, much better equipped to optimize their performance.

Let’s turn our attention now to answer several pressing questions. Namely, what is gait, and what does it have to do with athletics? How can we increase optimal athlete performance through gait? And, lastly, what tools will you need to do so

What Is Gait?

Gait is an individual’s pattern of walking. The gait cycle is the repeating process of picking up one foot, putting it down, swinging the other around, and picking up the first foot again. What we call a “stride” is an entire gait cycle, from end to end. The cycle can be broken down into eight phases:

1. Initial contact: when the foot hits the ground
2. Loading response: when the knee bends to accommodate the shift in weight and take on the force
3. Midstance: when the leg is straight
4. Terminal stance: when the leg falls behind in preparation for lifting off the ground
5. Pre-swing: right before the moment the foot leaves the ground
6. Initial swing: when the foot first leaves the ground
7. Mid swing: when the leg bends and moves forward
8. Terminal swing: as the foot comes in for a landing and right before initial contact

A problem with any one of these phases will impact the entire gait cycle. That, in turn, impacts running, walking and even standing, as well as a variety of athletic moves. Gait disorders vary widely, which is why it’s so important to paint a clear picture of what is happening – and to understand what gait has to do with athletics in the first place.

What Does Gait Have to Do with Athletics?

Before we can enhance optimal athlete performance through gait, we have to understand what role gait plays in sports.

The biomechanics of the human body has a lot to do with whether or not athletes are successful. How fast, strong, flexible, sturdy and reactive they are making a great deal of difference when it comes to catching a pass moving at 50 miles an hour or shifting stance in preparation to hit a ball with a racket.

While the entire body plays into athletic success, nothing is more important than the legs and feet. The latter must bear the weight of the entire frame, and any injury there – no matter how small – has ripple effects that travel upward throughout the body. Similarly, an injury above the level of the feet is likely to travel downward and manifest in a changed stance to account for the injury.

A proper gait helps to:

• Keep athletes balanced and responsive to changes in the game/environment
• Prevent the risk of chronic injury
• Reduce stress on joints, muscles and bones
• Decrease the likelihood of falling or missteps that could lead to acute injury
• Speed the healing of injuries

There is no one “best gait.” A gait is like a fingerprint, far too unique to address based on someone else’s metrics. Instead, if the goal is optimal athlete performance through gait, we have to “take the fingerprint” of each athlete individually.

How Can You Optimize Athlete Performance Through Gait?

How do we determine each athlete’s best gait using their specific biomechanical metrics? The answer to this is quite simple, if not easy. Physicians and athletic trainers need the right sensors and data to gather that information. That means:

1. Acquiring comfortable, flexible and discreet insoles with thousands of sensing points
2. Using software to collect the data the insoles generate
3. Hooking the two up so that the latter can gather information from the former without the athlete experiencing any interference from cables or other cumbersome systems
4. Analyzing plantar pressure and gait statistics to see where problems occur
5. Diagnosing issues and advising treatments to correct the issue
6. Performing additional data-gathering sessions to ascertain whether treatment is working
7. Fine-tuning a healthy gait to ensure proper healing from current injuries as well as reduce the risk of subsequent ones

The approach to this is different between walking and running, standing and weight shifting, but the systems still work the same: they gather information from the plantar surface and paint detailed pictures of what is happening there. That includes contact with the ground and each phase of the gait cycle. Doctors and trainers can make detailed recommendations to optimize their athletes’ performance over the long haul with that info in hand.

High-Performance Systems from XSENSOR Can Help

If you’re looking to gather insights to increase optimal athlete performance through gait, you need the right equipment. That means high-quality, reliable insoles, stance pads and walkways to help you analyze and diagnose issues.

XSENSOR provides leading-edge sensor technology. Our systems bring you the most detailed information on athletic performance, plantar mapping and gait optimization. Feel free to get in touch with questions or book a demo today.