A Biomechanical Analysis of Amputee Athlete Gait

The aims of the present study were to quantify lower limb kinetics and kinematics during walking and slow jogging of below-knee amputee athletes and to demonstrate the usefulness of the additional information provided by kinetic analyses as compared to that of kinematic assessments alone. Kinematic and force platform data from three amputee subjects were collected while the subjects walked and jogged in the laboratory. Results indicated that neither prosthesis (SACH and an energy-storing carbon fiber or ESCF) emulated the kinetics or the kinematics of so-called normal gait during walking. While the knee joint on the prosthetic side clearly tended to be biased toward extension during stance, the knee flexors were dominant and acted concentrically during this phase of the gait cycle. An examination of prosthetic limb hip and knee joint kinetics at both cadences revealed the functional role played by the hamstrings early in stance. The results indicated that with increasing cadence, less variability, measured by coefficients of variation, was evident in the kinematic data while the opposite was true for the kinetics.