TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2014//
TI  - A behavioral mechanism of how increases in leg strength improve old adults' gait speed
JO  - PLoS one
A1  - Uematsu, Azusa
A1  - Tsuchiya, Kazushi
A1  - Kadono, Norio
A1  - Kobayashi, Hirofumi
A1  - Kaetsu, Takamasa
A1  - Hortobagyi, Tibor
A1  - Suzuki, Shuji
SP  - e110350
EP  - e110350
VL  - 9
IS  - 10
N2  - 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>
LA  - en
SN  - 1932-6203
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0110350
ID  - ref1
ER  -