Correlation between Gait Speed andMovement Time of Upper Limb Tasks inHealthy Older Adults.

Gait speed is an important measure of functional ability and has been widely used in older adults as an indicator of frailty. It may be used as a guide to help with clinical care and to implement intervention strategies that may increase functional independence. As a person ages, their walking speed reduces along with the speed with which they perform an upper limb task. The velocity of the upper limbs can be calculated in terms of “movement timeâ€, defined as the time taken to complete a predefined motor task. A person does not move slowly voluntarily as it would utilize a maximum number of neural and attention resources. Evidence suggests that training in upper limb tasks also activates ipsilateral lower limb muscles.However, if further studies could find a correlation between movement time and walking speed, interventions involving upper limb training could be designed which may improve the gait speed.