This isn’t really a proper post. It’s just a notification that I’ve finally recorded the last screencast in the current Why we walk the way we do series. This series of videos now forms what I see as a complete and biomechanically rigorous explanation of healthy human walking (at least for kinematics in the sagittal plane – adding kinetics, muscle activation and the other planes is a future project). In thinking these through over the last four years I’ve turned up a few surprises and I’m now convinced that there are serious flaws in most of the published explanations of walking. This latest video is no exception. It looks at the nature of the transition from swing to stance and argues that David Winter’s early view (1992) that the foot is placed “gently” is more appropriate than more recent theories that view foot contact more as a “collision”. Please leave a comment if you find the video useful or equally if you want to argue against my ideas – they are just ideas.

I’ve now tidied up the videos page on this blog-site so the videos are much easier to view from there. Alternatively you can find them on my YouTube channel.

Over the weekend I’ve also added tidied up the Resources page and made a GPS/MAP calculating spreadsheet available as well as the muscle length modelling software (for Vicon systems only) that is already there.

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Winter, D. A. (1992). Foot trajectory in human gait: a precise and multifactorial motor control task. Phys Ther, 72(1), 45-53; discussion 54-46.