ArticleScientific reports2020
Rigid soles improve balance in beam walking, but improvements do not persist with bare feet.
Article in Scientific reports, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- What affects the movement can be seen from the movement: Effects of optical information and dynamical constraints on movement production and perception.Journal of vision · 2026Article
- Vision Is Not Required to Elicit Balance Improvements From Beam Walking Practice.Motor control · 2024Article
- Human foot force informs balance control strategies when standing on a narrow beam.Journal of neurophysiology · 2024Article
- Article
- Mechanical effects of canes on standing posture: beyond perceptual information.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation · 2022Article
- Beam width and arm position but not cognitive task affect walking balance in older adults.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Central nervous system physiology.Clinical neurophysiology : official journal of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2021Review
- Response to perturbation during quiet standing resembles delayed state feedback optimized for performance and robustness.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Identifying human postural dynamics and control from unperturbed balance.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Maintaining balance while walking on a narrow beam is a challenging motor task. One important factor is that the foot's ability to exert torque on the support surface is limited by the beam width. Still, the feet serve as a critical interface between the body and the external environment, and it is unclear how the mechanical properties of the feet affect balance. This study examined how constraining the motion of the foot joints with rigid soles influenced balance performance when walking on a beam. We recorded whole-body kinematics of subjects with varying skill levels as they walked on a narrow beam with and without wearing flat, rigid soles on their feet. We computed changes in whole-body motion and angular momentum across the two conditions. Results showed that walking with rigid soles improved balance performance in both expert and novice subjects, but that improvements in balance performance with rigid soles did not affect or transfer to subsequent task performance with bare feet. The absence of any aftereffects suggested that the improved balance performance resulting from constraining the foot joints by a rigid sole was the result of a mechanical effect rather than a change in neural control. Although wearing rigid soles can be used to assist balance, there appears to be limited benefit for training or rehabilitation of balance ability.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.