The effect of six weeks balance training program on kinematic of walking in women elderly people

The effect of six weeks balance training program on kinematic of walking in women elderly people Abstract The aim of this present study was to examine the effect of 6 weeks balance training on some of the kinematic features of walking in elderly women. For this purpose, 20 elderly women with the mean and standard deviation of the age 67.72± 4.48, weight 67.27±6.56Kg and hieght 155±0.036cm whose static and dynamic balance was at the standard level according to the results of BBS and TUG tests participated voluntarily in this study. They were randomly divided to control and experiment groups. Subjects in each group took part in a walking test in a pre-test session followed by a post-test after 6 weeks. During this period, subjects in the experiment group did the balance training systematically for 3 sessions in a week, overall were trained for 18 sessions balance training until engage somatesensory, visual, vestibular systems such as(jumping out of the hole, gait by 8, crossing obstacle, walking with heel) which monitored by the researcher while the control group followed their ordinary lives. In pre and post-test sessions after installing the markers on the specific parts of the subjects’ bodies, they were asked to walk on the rout of 7 meters with the prefered walking speed. Kinematic features of the walking such as length and width of the step, double support time and walking speed were collected and analyzed with the Cortex software. Repetitive ANOVA (2*2) was used for data analysis. Results of this study showed that balance training during 6 weeks increased some of the Kinematic features like length step 11.33% (p=0.01), and walking speed 18% (p=0.04) significantly in elderly women of the experiment group. Although variables such as double support time (p=0.06), width of step (p=0.48) and, this reductions were not significant in comparison to the control group. In general, Results of the current study confirmed the effect of balance exercises for 6 weeks in increasement of length of step and walking speed in elderly women. Therefore, this exercise program has improved the general pattern of walking in elderly women.