Gait Analysis
Gait analysis is a detailed assessment that examines how you walk or run. Whether you're experiencing chronic pain, recovering from injury, or seeking to optimize athletic performance, understanding your gait patterns reveals critical insights. A comprehensive gait analysis evaluates your stride length, foot strike pattern, hip and knee alignment, pelvic stability, and upper body mechanics. These observations identify inefficiencies and asymmetries that contribute to pain, limit speed and endurance, or increase risk of injury. By analyzing how you move, we can pinpoint exactly what needs correction.
Our Gait Testing Methods
At Ascend Rehab & Performance, our gait analysis specialists employ multiple assessment approaches tailored to your specific needs:
Walking gait analysis examines your everyday movement patterns, identifying issues that contribute to hip pain, knee discomfort, ankle instability, or lower back strain during daily activities.
Running gait analysis focuses on the higher forces and speeds involved in running, evaluating cadence, foot strike, ground contact time, and joint loading patterns that affect performance and injury susceptibility.
Functional gait analysis assesses how variations in speed, terrain, and load affect your mechanics, providing insights relevant to your real-world activities.
We utilize video analysis from multiple angles, allowing frame-by-frame review that makes your movement patterns identifiable. This visual feedback accelerates improvement and enhances your body awareness.
How Understanding Your Gait Improves Performance
Your gait directly impacts efficiency, speed, endurance, and injury resilience. Poor mechanics waste energy as every inefficient stride adds up over a thousand steps. A proper review reveals whether you're overstriding, landing too heavily, or allowing excessive hip drop which are all performance limiters that also increase stress on joints and soft tissues. By optimizing your gait, you'll run faster with less effort, reduce ground reaction forces that damage joints, eliminate chronic overuse injuries, and move with greater control.
Transform Your Stride with Ascend
As Denver's premier gait analysis specialists, Ascend doesn't just identify problems—we fix them. Our comprehensive approach combines detailed assessment with hands-on manual therapy to address mobility restrictions, followed by targeted corrective exercises that retrain movement patterns. Unlike generic running stores or isolated assessments, we integrate gait analysis into complete treatment plans. You receive one-on-one attention from doctorate-trained specialists who understand the complex relationships between foot mechanics, hip stability, and core control.
Schedule your comprehensive gait analysis at Ascend today and discover how better mechanics lead to better performance.