ABSTRACT
The focus of this chapter is to explore the threats to dynamic stability during locomotion from slips and trips, strategies available to recover from these unexpected events, implications for preventing injuries in the workplace and rehabilitation strategies should an injury occur. Human locomotion is by its very nature an unstable act. The roots of the word cadence used to describe this activity is ‘cadere’ meaning ‘to fall’. Each step we take involves a fall followed by a recovery. During 80 per cent of a stride, we are in single support with the body center of mass outside the base of support: thus by definition of static stability we are falling (Winter, 1991). Clearly what prevents a fall from occurring is the next support created by the swing limb. This cycle of falling and recovery is nicely captured by the analogy of an egg rolling end over end which has been used to describe walking.
