Carrying a weapon does not change stride-time variability during treadmill-based load carriage

Slattery, P, Wheat, J ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1107-6452, Cofré Lizama, LE, Gastin, P, Dascombe, B and Middleton, K, 2025. Carrying a weapon does not change stride-time variability during treadmill-based load carriage. Ergonomics. ISSN 0014-0139

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Abstract

Gait biomechanics during load carriage tasks are a focus of military research aiming to optimise performance and manage injury risk. However, the impact of weapon handling on gait during these tasks remains relatively unexplored. This study investigates non-linear stride time measures, specifically detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) and sample entropy (SE), which assess the persistence and regularity of stride time. Seventeen Australian Army soldiers completed 12-minute walking trials on an instrumented treadmill, both with and without a replica rifle while carrying 23.2 kg of load at speeds of 3.5 km/h, 5.5 km/h, and 6.5 km/h. Heel contacts were tracked using an 18-camera Vicon system. Mixed-effect model analyses indicated that weapon handling did not significantly affect stride time variability (DFA p = 0.46) or regularity (SE p = 0.42), suggesting it may not be a critical factor in future studies of stride time variability during load carriage tasks.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Ergonomics
Creators:	Slattery, P., Wheat, J., Cofré Lizama, L.E., Gastin, P., Dascombe, B. and Middleton, K.
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Date:	12 August 2025
ISSN:	0014-0139
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1080/00140139.2025.2542421 DOI 2512379 Other
Rights:	This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Science and Technology
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	13 Oct 2025 10:12
Last Modified:	13 Oct 2025 10:12
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/54549

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