Treadmill Oscillation Walking to Improve Weight Transfer During Gait Following Stroke

Each participant with stroke will partake in 18 training sessions. Training sessions will be for one hour three times a week for 6 weeks. During training, participants will walk at their self-selected walking speed on the treadmill that moves side-to-side for 1 cm in a sinusoidal pattern. The sinusoidal oscillation frequency will match each participant's natural stride frequency calculated from baseline evaluation. Subjects will be instructed to respond naturally and maintain continuous walking. Participants will wear a safety harness with no body weight support. For each training session, six 6-minute bouts of treadmill oscillation trials will be performed (Hsiao et al. 2016) and rest period will be provided between bouts. Because lower extremity muscle activity increases with increasing oscillation frequency, the treadmill oscillation frequency will be increased by 5% each week to continue to drive progressive adaptive changes (25% over 6 weeks) (Pohl et al. 2002).