Abstract
Minimalist shoes are proposed to promote walking gait patterns more similar to natural barefoot gait. While there is already considerable research evaluating the effects of minimalist shoes on running biomechanics, little has been reported about the effects of minimalist shoes on kinematic and kinetic parameters during normal gait. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to compare biomechanical gait parameters between walking in non-cushioned minimalist shoes, in conventional cushioned shoes and barefoot. Kinematic (cadence, step length, foot progression angle, length of CoP) and kinetic (vGRF) parameters of 32 healthy adults were collected at preferred walking speed on an instrumented treadmill. ANOVA or Friedman- Tests were applied for between condition comparisons. In case of significant (p < 0.05) main effects, post-hoc analyses were implemented for pairwise comparisons. Significant main effects of footwear conditions were found for all parameters (p ≤ .001). Post-hoc analyses revealed that increased cushioning properties of the applied footwear are associated with increased step lengths, lengths of CoP trajectory and foot progression angle as well as a reduced cadence. Additionally, decreased cushioning resulted in increased vGRF, especially of the forefoot and rearfoot. Results indicate that footwear significantly affects biomechanical gait parameters in a group of healthy adults. The findings have implications on the use of footwear during walking gait, with special emphasis on the cushioning properties of the different conditions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.