Upper limbs influence on the ground reaction forces in human walking

The knowledge of the three-dimensional movements of the human body and of the forces between foot and ground is prerequisite for the design of artificial joints and calculation of the forces in the hip and knee during walking. The major objectives of this work were to quantify the influence of individual gait determinants on the ground reaction forces generated during normal level walking and to determine the influence of the upper limbs swing on the human walking. Measurements were taken with 32 male and 20 female person using the Elite motion analyser and Kistler force platform. The maximum ground reaction forces are plotted against gait speed and body weight. In addition, some statistical distributions are presented.