@article{ref1,
title="A behavioral mechanism of how increases in leg strength improve old adults' gait speed",
journal="PLoS one",
year="2014",
author="Uematsu, Azusa and Tsuchiya, Kazushi and Kadono, Norio and Kobayashi, Hirofumi and Kaetsu, Takamasa and Hortobagyi, Tibor and Suzuki, Shuji",
volume="9",
number="10",
pages="e110350-e110350",
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.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1932-6203",
doi="10.1371/journal.pone.0110350",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0110350"
}