Footwear and Cadence Affect Gait Variability in Runners with Patellofemoral Pain

Purpose To examine the effects of increased cadence and minimalist footwear on lower-limb variability in runners with patellofemoral pain (PFP). Methods Fifteen (12 female, 3 male) runners with PFP ran on an instrumented treadmill with three-dimensional motion capture in three randomly ordered conditions: (i) standard shoe at preferred cadence, (ii) standard shoe +10% cadence, and (iii) minimalist shoe at preferred cadence. Vector coding was used to calculate coordination variability between strides for select lower-limb joint couplings. Approximate entropy was calculated to assess continuous variability for segment kinematic and kinetic data and compared between conditions using repeated-measures ANOVA. One-dimensional statistical parametric mapping repeated-measures ANOVA was performed on the coordination variability data. Cohen’s d effect size was calculated for all comparisons. Results Larger approximate entropy values (i.e., greater variability) were observed for the standard shoe +10% cadence versus the standard shoe at preferred cadence for hip flexion/extension (P
Source: Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise - Category: Sports Medicine Tags: APPLIED SCIENCES Source Type: research