Assessment of Fall Risks and Subject-specific Training for Fall Reduction

"1. If the participant shows instability in any specific perturbation directions or with excessive body swaying, the participant will practice walking with a cellphone strapped on the chest in-home training. A cellphone App will detect potential excessive body swaying in any directions and prompt the participant with real time audio-visual feedback to reduce sway in the specific directions.~2. If the subject is diagnosed with collapse-related vertical instability, lower-limb muscle strengthening will be emphasized in the training. The subject may work out with a Shuttle Mini-Press, AB Squat machine, Rowing machine, or Upright Row-n-Ride. The Investigators will select one machine appropriate for the subject to take home. The exercise will be 3-5 sets a day and about 15 repetitions per set. In the beginning, the exercise can be slower and with fewer repetitions based on the subject's capability. As the subject progresses, the subject may change from one exercise machine to another."

In the weekly lab-based training session, the subject will do individualized training using the sliding stepping trainer, with a focus on the direction the subject showed higher risks of falling, as identified in the initial assessment. The sliding stepping trainer will generate perturbations of the footplates in those identified risky directions during stepping.