The influence of occupational footwear on dynamic balance perturbations

Abstract

Occupational footwear is designed for safety and have been shown to impact balance, especially in occupational environments, where the human body is subjected to destabilizing forces by both internal and external perturbations.

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to analyze the effects of three industry standard occupational footwear on balance performance during external perturbations.

Methods: Thirty-one healthy male adults (age: 21.2 ± 1.4 years; height: 179 ± 9.4 cm; mass: 82.6 ± 15.4 kg) with no history of neuro-musculoskeletal abnormalities participated in this study. The experimental procedure followed a repeated measures design; all participants were tested for balance with barefoot (BF), and three occupational footwear presented in a randomized order: low top shoe (LT), tactical boot (TB) and work boot (WB) on the same day separated by 10-minute washout rest periods. Balance was assessed by Motor Control Test (MCT) on the NeuroCom Equitest with synced electromyography (EMG) recordings from right lower extremity muscles. Postural response latencies, EMG mean, peak, %maximal voluntary contraction and time-to-peak muscle activity were analyzed using a one-way RM ANOVA individually for backward and forward perturbations (p = 0.05) and followed by pairwise comparisons with a Bonferroni correction.

Results: Postural response latencies were significantly faster with barefoot. Although no differences existed for response latencies between LT, TB and WB, the TB demonstrated significantly lower muscle activity during balance perturbations.

Conclusion: Under acute conditions, even though postural response latencies were faster in barefoot condition, use of tactical boot had normal response latencies and also demonstrated significantly lower muscle activity, suggesting the need for only minimal requirement of muscular effort to maintain balance when exposed to external perturbations.

Keywords:

• occupational footwear
• balance perturbations
• postural latencies
• muscle activity
• occupational falls

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.