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Biomechanics / Rehabilitation
Gait Cycle Spatial-Temporal Parameters Simulator
From walking speed, cadence and leg length, this tool computes step length, stride length, gait cycle time, stance/swing phase, Froude number and fall risk in real time, and compares your input with typical patterns for normal, elderly, post-stroke, Parkinson and athlete walkers, ready to use in rehabilitation and sports biomechanics.
Parameters
Walking speed V
m/s
1.2-1.5 m/s for healthy adults, 0.8-1.0 m/s for older adults
Cadence
steps/min
Steps per minute. Typical adult value is 110-120
Leg length L_leg
m
Greater trochanter to floor distance, used to normalise Froude
Walking condition
Typical parameters shift with pathology and athletic level
Body mass
kg
Used to adjust step width and energy cost
Left-right symmetry
%
Ratio of stance times. Below 85% is flagged asymmetric
Results
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Step length (m)
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Stride length (m)
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Gait cycle (s)
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Stance / Swing (s)
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Froude number
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Fall risk
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Walking animation — footprints and spatial-temporal parameters
A walker moves to the right; footprints below mark step length and stride length, while the bar on top shows the stance (blue) / swing (orange) split.
T_cycle is the time between two heel strikes of the same foot. The typical 60% stance / 40% swing / 20% double-support split applies to healthy adults.
Gait Spatial-Temporal Parameters — Rehabilitation and Sports Biomechanics
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"Gait analysis" — is that the thing TV does when they film marathon runners from the side? What exactly are they measuring?
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Exactly that, but instead of subjective "nice form" you measure numbers. The basics are the spatial-temporal parameters this tool deals with: spatial gives you step length and stride length, temporal gives you gait cycle, 60% stance and 40% swing. With just those few numbers you can quantify rehabilitation progress, fall risk, and running efficiency surprisingly well.
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How do step and stride differ? And changing "cadence 110" on the left clearly changes my step length too.
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Good catch. Step is right→left, one half-cycle; stride is right→next right, one full cycle. So stride = 2 × step. Speed and cadence are tied by V = stride × cadence / 60, which means you can hit the same speed either by stretching your stride or by raising cadence. At V = 1.4 m/s with cadence 110 you get step ≈ 0.76 m and stride ≈ 1.53 m, which are textbook healthy-adult values.
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"Froude number" sounds like fluid mechanics. Why does it show up in walking?
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It started as a ship-wave coefficient, yes, but it transfers cleanly because Fr = V²/(g·L_leg) normalises speed by leg length, so children vs adults and humans vs animals can be compared in dynamic similarity. Humans walk best around Fr ≈ 0.25 and switch to running near Fr ≈ 0.5. A short-legged person reaches the same Fr at a lower absolute speed, so in dimensionless terms they are walking "just as fast" as a tall person.
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When I switch the condition selector to "post-stroke" the verdict turns yellow or red. What is it checking?
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Two things. One is fall risk: elderly, stroke and Parkinson are populations with several-fold higher fall rates, so they are flagged "High" by default. The other is left-right symmetry: below 85% we call the gait asymmetric. In hemiplegic stroke the affected side spends less time in stance, so the patient overloads the sound side and ends up with secondary knee or back problems. Restoring symmetry is one of the central goals of rehabilitation.
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What's the "walking speed vs CoT" chart showing?
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CoT is the cost of transport — oxygen consumed per kg of body weight per meter travelled, in ml O₂/kg/m. Humans show a U-shaped curve with a minimum around V = 1.3–1.4 m/s. Walking faster or slower than that costs more energy per meter, so we unconsciously pick the most economical speed. The default 1.4 m/s sits right at the bottom of the curve. Slow-shuffling elderly walkers and interval-running athletes both spend more energy because they have stepped off this optimum.
Frequently Asked Questions
Step length is the distance from the heel strike of one foot to the heel strike of the opposite foot, while stride length is from the heel strike of one foot to the next heel strike of the same foot. Therefore stride length ≈ 2 × step length. This tool computes step = V·60/cadence and stride = 2·step from walking speed V (m/s) and cadence (steps/min). Typical adult values are 0.7-0.8 m for step and 1.4-1.6 m for stride.
The Froude number Fr = V²/(g·L_leg) is a dimensionless walking index used to compare subjects with different leg lengths (children vs adults, humans vs animals) under dynamic similarity. Humans prefer Fr ≈ 0.25 for walking, and transition to running around Fr ≈ 0.5. People with shorter legs reach higher Fr at the same speed, so they are effectively walking "faster" in dimensionless terms. This is important in paediatric rehabilitation and comparative animal locomotion research.
In healthy adult walking, roughly 60% of the gait cycle is the stance phase (foot in contact with the ground) and 40% is the swing phase (foot in the air), with about 20% double support (both feet on the ground). As speed increases, stance and double support shrink; once the gait switches to running, double support disappears entirely. In stroke or lower-limb pain, stance time on the affected side becomes shorter and left-right symmetry drops.
Walking speed V = stride × cadence / 60, so the same speed can be reached either by a longer stride or by a higher cadence. Healthy walkers select the optimum combination automatically, but elderly people and Parkinson patients tend to keep cadence while shortening the stride (the "shuffling" pattern). Rehabilitation typically targets restoring the balance between stride and cadence rather than chasing absolute speed.
Real-world Applications
Rehabilitation medicine and gait training: After stroke, spinal cord injury, or joint replacement, walking speed, step length and left-right symmetry are central outcomes for discharge planning and therapy progression. Standard clinical tests — the 10 m walking test, Timed Up and Go (TUG), 6-minute walking test — all measure a subset of these spatial-temporal parameters. Gait-training robots like Lokomat measure the same variables in real time while guiding the patient's legs.
Fall prediction and elderly care: In community-dwelling older adults, walking speed below 1.0 m/s, reduced cadence and shortened steps are established independent predictors of falls, future need for care, and one-year mortality. Care facilities and home-medicine programs run periodic gait-mat or IMU-based screening to flag the high-risk group and start prevention. The "Fall risk: High" verdict in this tool reflects that clinical consensus.
Sports biomechanics and running analysis: For marathoners and sprinters, the product of stride length and cadence directly drives running economy (CoT). Elite runners combine long strides with high cadence (~180 steps/min) and cross Froude 0.5 into the running regime. In amateur running, "fixing overstride" and "keeping cadence above 170" are well-established cues now monitored live by running watches.
Prosthetics, orthotics and AI gait recognition: For lower-limb amputees, restoring symmetry between the sound and prosthetic sides is the design priority, with spatial-temporal parameters as the main evaluation metric. Because gait patterns are highly individual, the same data feed gait recognition for airports and security sites, walking-feature matching in forensics, and even early detection of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) where subtle gait changes precede memory loss.
Common Misconceptions and Pitfalls
The most common mistake is "high walking speed = healthy, low = pathological" as an absolute rule. Walking speed is a good summary metric, but the same 1.0 m/s in a 180 cm man and a 150 cm older woman lives in very different territories of the Froude curve — the latter is walking much "faster" in dimensionless terms. In clinical evaluation it is standard practice to normalise by age, sex, height and leg length (z-scores or Froude) instead of judging from raw m/s alone.
Second, thinking that "100% symmetry is the ideal target". Healthy adults are never perfectly symmetric — 95-98% is typical because of leg dominance. After acute stroke, forcing the unaffected side to match the affected side can flatten the symmetry but drop overall walking speed and distance. Symmetry is one of several metrics, never the only one; the 85% threshold this tool flags is a screening cutoff, not a treatment target.
Finally, "making my stride longer will make me faster" as advice for runners. In fact, overstriding increases the heel-strike braking force, slows you down, and raises the impact on knee, anterior thigh and lower back. Modern coaching teaches "raise cadence (pitch) and let the stride find its natural length" instead of consciously stretching the stride. The same idea applies in rehabilitation: build a stride-and-cadence balance appropriate to the individual's leg length, strength and joint range, not the textbook maximum.
How to Use
Enter walking speed in m/s (typical range 0.5–2.0 m/s for adults); 1.4 m/s represents normal comfortable pace.
Enter leg length in meters (measured hip joint center to ankle); use 0.43 × height for approximation.
Input body mass in kg to calculate Froude number and dynamic stability metrics.
Simulator outputs step length, stride length, gait cycle duration, stance/swing phase times, Froude number, and fall risk classification.
Worked Example
Patient: 70 kg adult, leg length 0.95 m, walking speed 1.2 m/s, cadence 110 steps/min. Step length = walking speed / (cadence/60) = 1.2 / 1.833 = 0.655 m. Stride length = 2 × step length = 1.31 m. Gait cycle time = 60/cadence = 0.545 s. Stance phase ≈ 65% of cycle = 0.354 s; swing ≈ 0.191 s. Froude number = (v²)/(g×leg length) = (1.44)/(9.81×0.95) = 0.154 (stable gait, value <0.3 indicates safe walking dynamics).
Practical Notes
Froude number >0.5 indicates pendulum-like running gait; <0.1 signals cautious, compensatory walking typical in elderly or post-stroke rehabilitation.
Stance/swing asymmetry (difference >10%) reflects unilateral weakness, pain avoidance, or neurological deficit—compare left vs. right leg separately in clinical gait analysis.
Fall risk correlates with cadence variability and reduced stride length relative to leg length ratio; ratio <1.0 indicates shortened gait requiring intervention.
For pediatric patients, scale parameters: children aged 4–6 walk at 1.0–1.3 m/s with cadence 130–160 steps/min due to shorter legs and higher stride frequency.