Gait refers to the posture and behavior characteristics of human body when walking, and the process of human body moving in a certain direction through a series of continuous activities of hips, knees, ankles and toes. Gait involves behavior habits, occupation, education, age, gender, and is also affected by many diseases.
The control of walking is very complicated, including central command, body balance and coordinated control, involving the coordinated movement of joints and muscles of lower limbs, and also related to the posture of upper limbs and trunk. The disorder of any link may affect gait, and the abnormality may also be compensated or covered up. Normal gait has stability, periodicity and rhythm, directionality, coordination and individual differences. However, when people have diseases, these gait characteristics will change obviously.
Gait cycle (GC): When walking, the process that one heel touches the ground again with the other heel is called walking cycle, which is usually expressed by time seconds (s). The gait cycle of ordinary adults is about1-1.32 seconds ... Every gait cycle in walking contains a series of typical posture changes, which are usually divided into a series of time periods, called gait stages/cycles. A walking cycle can be divided into standing stage and swinging stage, and subdivided into eight stages, which are generally expressed in percentage (GC%) of gait cycle and sometimes in seconds (s).