20/02/2022
What is Gait? When a patient comes in complaining of pain in their lower extremities, a physical therapist will often conduct a Gait Analysis. This is essentially a fancy way of saying that the therapist wants to know how the patient walks. When a therapist detects an issue with a patient’s gait, they will then look up and down the body to find impairments. Issues located at any area of the body can affect gait; this includes the head down to the toes.
What are the components of gait? As seen in this image, gait is comprised of two primary sections: the swing phase and the stance phase. The swing phase is when the leg is swinging through the air while the stance phase is when the leg is touching the ground. The swing phase can be further broken down into initial swing, mid swing, and terminal swing.
The stance phase is made of heel strike, foot flat, midstance, heel off, and finally push off. A person can have issues with one or multiple portions of the gait cycle which are controlled by different muscles. An example of this is that weak hamstrings, the muscles on the back of your thigh, can result in the leg not being controlled during terminal swing. This would result in the lower leg “whipping out” as it comes down to land.
Other aspects that will by analyzed are the step length (distance from contact of one foot to the other), stride length (distance from contact of one foot to when it contacts again), cadence (number of steps per minute), and gait velocity (average horizontal speed of the body in miles per hour).
Gait is one of the more complicated aspects of physical therapy. It takes a keen eye to discriminate areas that require treatment. Issues can include muscle weakness, poor muscular control, tight muscles, loose joints, joints that have blockages in them, etc. All of this can be treated with physical therapy to get patients back to walking without pain or limitation.