Spatiotemporal characteristics of spontaneous overground walk-to-run transition

The purpose of the current study was to examine spontaneous overground walk-to-run transitions (WRT). For the first time, subjects' WRT was examined during an overground protocol that allowed them to accelerate freely. The overground speed profile prior to reaching the WRT was analysed together with the spatiotemporal characteristics of the actual transition. Nine women (height: 166.4+/-3.5 cm) performed five spontaneous WRT. Speed, step frequency (SF) and step length (SL) of the accelerating walking steps and the transition step were determined. By means of fourth degree polynomials, subjects' spatiotemporal profiles prior to reaching WRT were determined. A step length index (SLI) was used to calculate the contribution of SF and SL to the increase in walking speed. Subjects took on average 5.9+/-0.9 walking steps prior to reaching transition. When speeding up towards the transition to running, subjects chose to accelerate predominantly in the first half of the walking acceleration period, followed by smaller speed increments in the second half. The SLI values indicated that subjects tended to increase walking speed by increasing SL, more than SF, except during the first 20% of the acceleration period. WRT-speed was 2.664+/-0.230 m s(-1), which was higher than in former treadmill studies using a constant acceleration protocol (+/-2.1 m s(-1)). Subjects made a speed jump of 0.417 m s(-1) from the last walking step to the WRT-step. We can conclude that further transition studies studying the interaction between the acceleration and gait transition behaviour are necessary in order to complete the understanding of the transition phenomenon.