ABSTRACT
The purpose of the study was to determine if the effects of a high-velocity (power) training program would help improve the ability to avoid obstacles and walk faster for women 70 years of age and older Thirty women 70 years of age or older from the Oakmont Active Adult Community in Santa Rosa, CA were randomly assigned to one of two groups: training (n=15) or control (n=15). The trained group participated in a high velocity resistance strength-training program 3 days/week for 12 weeks. Participants in the trained group completed 1RM testing. Participants were then trained at 70% of their 1RM. A 1RM posttest was completed after the 12-week training period to determine the changes in strength. Both groups participated in an obstacle avoidance test prior to and after the training. Video data were collected from the frontal and sagittal view and were used to determine the number of obstacles hit when walking across the course. Wilcoxen Signed Rank tests was used to analyze the changes in strength and walking speed and Kruskal Wallis a non-parametric alternative to ANOVA was used to compare time and the number of obstacles hit. After the completion of the 12-week training there were significant increases in strength (ρ < 0.005) and walking speed for the training group (ρ < 0.001). There were no significant differences in obstacle avoidance for either group (ρ >.05). However, compared to the pretest the training group had a significant improvement in walking speed without hitting more obstacles. While power training did result in improvements in strength and walking speed, there was no effect on obstacle avoidance. In addition, the walking speed did not increase the number of obstacles hit.