Gait Analysis - What Is It?
Gait Analysis is essentially taking a microscope and having a detailed look at the physics behind how your body moves when you walk, run or complete a sequence of movements specific to your chosen sport (a bowler’s run up in cricket for example).
Is it important? You bet it is!
In fact, by getting a detailed understanding of how your body moves, we can begin to appreciate how your body will deal with the forces associated with walking or running, and even better, how we can influence that so that we optimise your movement patterns.
What's Involved?
We offer two types of gait analyses at Orthotique.
The first involves us watching you walk or run as part of a comprehensive assessment, in order to determine how your body moves and how we can improve it using orthotics.
This type of in-consult analysis is often all that is required, and when put together with the rest of your assessment findings, helps to paint a picture of what may be happening at a pain or symptom level.
The second type is more involved, and is usually conducted as a stand alone assessment where we go much deeper into the mechanical patterns of your gait cycle.
This is a great thing if you are a serious level athlete who is looking to optimise your mechanics with the aim of achieving that PB, or trying to reduce fatigue associated with mechanical stresses to avoid repetitive injury.
As with everything else we do when you join our team, if we think you’ll benefit from a more in depth look at how you move, we’ll make sure we give you a tap on the shoulder. Or foot.