Comparison of Race Walking and Power Walking at Varying Paces by Expressing Movement in the Frequency Domain

Abstract

Many people use walking as a form of exercise to maintain or improve their health. Main gait types of walking are normal walking, power Walking and race walking. Although race walking has a potential to contribute significantly to healthcare due to its high exercise load, it is difficult for athletes to judge gait themselves due to the nature of the competition, in which the gait is judged visually by a judge. Therefore, this study focuses on race walking and elucidates mechanism of race walking in order to examine whether race walking can be used for healthcare. Previously, this research group has considered walking as a periodic motion and proposed a method to quantitatively represent normal walking by analyzing the frequency components of vertical acceleration that occur in body parts during walking. By applying this method to race walking, it is considered that frequency components can be used as a quantitative indicator of characteristics in race walking, and can help to evaluate and improve their own movement. On the other hand, power Walking, which is a walking movement with a stronger exercise load than normal walking, is more similar to race walking than normal walking. So, we believe that the characteristics of race walking can be further clarified by comparing the characteristics of power Walking with those of race walking. Therefore, the purpose of this report is to clarify the characteristics of walking movement in race walking based on the frequency components of vertical accelerations occurring at body parts in race walking and power Walking. In this report, pace is used as one of parameters to represent the movement, and changes in the characteristics of movement when pace is varied are focused on.

Keywords: Gait Analysis, Frequency Analysis, Race Walking, Power Walking

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1005704