Low-frequency accelerations over-estimate impact-related shock during walking

During gait, a failure to acknowledge the low-frequency component of a segmental acceleration signal will result in an overestimation of impact-related shock and may lead to inappropriately drawn conclusions. The present study was undertaken to investigate the significance of this low-frequency component in two distinctly different modalities of gait: barefoot (BF) and shod (SHOD) walking. Twenty-seven participants performed five walking trials at self-selected speed in each condition. Peak positive accelerations (PPA) at the shank and spine were first derived from the time-domain signal. The raw acceleration signals were then resolved in the frequency-domain and the active (low-frequency) and impact-related components of the power spectrum density (PSD) were quantified. PPA was significantly higher at the shank (P < 0.0001) and spine (P = 0.0007) in the BF condition. In contrast, no significant differences were apparent between conditions for shank (P = 0.979) or spine (P = 0.178) impact-related PSD when the low-frequency component was considered. This disparity between approaches was due to a significantly higher active PSD in both signals in the BF condition (P < 0.0001; P = 0.008, respectively), due to kinematic differences between conditions (P < 0.05). These results indicate that the amplitude of the low-frequency component of an acceleration signal during gait is dependent on knee and ankle joint coordination behaviour, and highlight that impact-related shock is more accurately quantified in the frequency-domain following subtraction of this component.