Introduction to Gait Analysis

Understanding the impact of movement on the body can benefit your overall wellbeing. To examine this, our podiatrists use clinical gait analysis to study how a person walks or how the body moves. By assessing the body’s biomechanics and the effects on the lower limbs – feet, ankles, knees, and hips – The Foot Practice team can identify misalignments and treat a number of conditions that may affect your ability to walk or issues that attribute to recurring pain elsewhere in the body.

Gait is a cycle that begins when one foot hits the ground and completes when the same heel contacts the ground again. In cases of abnormal gait, the lower limbs can underperform to create imbalanced movements in other parts of the body, which can cause pain and injuries.

Relationship between Movement, Musculoskeletal Pain or Health Issues

A 3D Gait Analysis results goes beyond a simple examination of the feet. The analysis can reveal a lot about the relationship of the pain you’re experiencing as it relates to the way your entire body moves or how you walk. Hip pain, for example, may be caused by muscles that overcompensate to rebalance the body due to an inward rotation of the feet (in-toeing or pigeon-toe) or the opposite, less common out-toeing twist of the leg. Or perhaps, your back pain is directly related to the hamstring muscle creating the tightening around a knee joint.

You may unknowingly have asymmetrical gait or abnormal movement patterns for years before you experience any pain or a more serious injury. Rather than to wait to see a podiatrist following an injury, identifying musculoskeletal issues in advance can alter movement patterns to prevent any injuries especially before they become a chronic condition.

Beyond improving balance, strength, range of motion, sports performance, and endurance, a 3D Gait Analysis can help pinpoint the specific cause of pain indication whether from an abnormal musculoskeletal issue or more serious health conditions such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, or arthritis as a result of an altered gait pattern.

Through a 3D Gait Analysis, The Foot Practice team will undercover the biomechanics of your body’s movement and create an evidence-based treatment plan to help your muscles, bones and ligaments work efficiently together to prevent or rehabilitate injuries. In some instances, our podiatrist may recommend orthotics after the gait analysis.

The Difference between A 3D Versus Normal Gait Analysis

At The Foot Practice, our revolutionary 3D Gait Analysis method breaks down biomechanical movements in detail to pinpoint, prevent and reduce injuries at the root cause and data-driven details to enhance sports performance. The infrared technology accurately measures 3D joint angles in real-time, enabling our team to quantify biomechanics, assess musculoskeletal risk-factors, recommend evidence-based treatment, monitor outcomes of intervention and assess ongoing progress.

• Data Driven Using the exact same technology at elite sports performance centres, small reflective markers are positioned for infrared cameras to capture the specific anatomical landmark at the ankles, knees, hips and pelvis at 200 times a second. The data creates an accurate 3D skeletal model of your walking and running gait.
• Real-Time 3D Your biomechanics are measured at different points in your lower body. As you move or run on a treadmill, the data from your movement is measured in real-time. The information is analysed against healthy, uninjured individuals – a control database of athletes – to uncover any potential dysfunction of movement or asymmetrical gait patterns.
• Clinical Test The results of your gait analysis with a series of clinical musculoskeletal tests creates the basis for a personalised, data-driven injury treatment plan or performance training program to improve strength, adapt range of motion, and enhance function through aligning the body.
• The Root Cause By analysing your unique biomechanical data, our podiatrists gain an invaluable insight into how your body moves and functions. This enables our podiatry team to identify the root cause of your injury to develop an effective rehabilitation plan or to improve sports performance through the principle of marginal gains.
• Tailored Plan The results of your assessment creates the basis for a specific, tailor-made program just for you to prevent or rehabilitate an injury and/or to improve your performance. Through our 3D Gait Analysis system, resolve injuries faster and reach your goals!

Ultimately, our goal is to identify musculoskeletal dysfunctions or biomechanical abnormalities through gait to alleviate pain by understanding a body’s kinematics to correctly discover the root cause.

Treating Running Injuries

Running is a complex function consisting of a body’s musculoskeletal systems all coming together in unison to create fluid movement. Due to the repetitive nature of running, the impact of kinematics may cause underlying issues such as niggling conditions that can result in serious, more complicated injuries that can adversely impact your training programme. Treating a running injury is just as complex as running itself. Correctly identifying the root cause is paramount and first and foremost in treating a foot and ankle, knee or lower limb, pelvic, hip or back pain injury.

Injuries affect both experienced triathletes or novice recreational runners alike. Whether you’re suffering from a first-time or recurring Achilles tendon, metatarsalgia, plantar fasciitis, Iliotibial band, calf or shin injury, The Foot Practice’s Sports Podiatry team can treat some of the most common running injuries to aid in the prevention and/or recovery from the most debilitating injuries.

Enhancing Sports Performance

3D Gait Analysis is typically reserved for elite athletes throughout the world. This revolutionary technology is now available at The Foot Practice to critically evaluate every aspect of your musculoskeletal movement. Marginal gains is a concept top-performing athletes are well familiar with. By making small incremental advances in training, significant improvements can be achieved. By pinpointing slight imbalances, real clinical insights to boost performance and reduce injuries can be provided.

Through our biomechanical 3D Gait Analysis, we use real-time data to immediate rectify issues in gait to help your body move more efficiently. While monitoring training efficacy, we can compare different trials to, for examples, instantly assess the best footwear or to make quantifiable gait adjustments that can effectively improve running outcomes and/or reduce the risk of injuries while training.

The Foot Practice’s 3D Gait Analysis monitors the outcomes of treatment, delivers the most appropriate rehab treatment plan, and assesses progress over time by correctly measuring asymmetries and detrimental patterns in your running gait to help you train better and run faster.

Whether you’re simply looking to relieve pain from walking, prevent or rehabilitate an injury, or seek that competitive training advantage, make an appointment with The Foot Practice today for your 3D Gait Analysis in Singapore.