Habituating a gait correction

We tell our patients all the time that the key to acquiring the gait correctives is the number of times a day they show the nervous system the corrective gait patterns. It is not about 2-3 solid episodes of homework a day, rather, it is an hourly 2-3 minute focused episode driving nothing be the cleaned up motor skill we are trying to neurologically "rewrite".
We have 3 tiers in my office, Gold, Silver and Bronze.
Gold medal homework= 2-3 minutes every hour.
Silver medal homework= 2-3 min every 2 hours
Bronze medal homework= 2-3" every 3 hours (that is still a medal, because it is still 6x a day)

We start with one corrective in their gait and homework to set that pattern up. Then next visit we up the difficultly on that skill/pattern, and introduce another new one that is part of the overall gait correction was want to see. Thus, they are juggling 2 balls, one that is more familiar but a little harder, and now a new one that is at the basic level. The next visit, we add a 3rd ball, upping the demands on the other 2.
Rinse and repeat.
This goes for walking and running gait problems.

IF they want this pattern to be come more habitual faster, one has to go for gold, or gold++.

-Shawn Allen, the other gait guy
#gait, #gaitproblems, #gaitcorrections, #gaitretraining, #gaitanalysis, #thegaitguys, #habits, #runningform

"The findings indicate that the amount of practice in the criterion task is more critical than the difficulty and variations of task practice when learning new gait patterns during treadmill walking."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30905405