{"doi":"10.1101/2021.10.18.21265129","title":"Quantifying Cause-Effect Relations Between Walking Speed, Propulsive Force, and Metabolic Cost","abstract":"Abstract Walking speed is a useful surrogate for health status across the population. Walking speed appears to be governed in part by propulsive force (F P ) generated during push-off and simultaneously optimized to minimize metabolic cost. However, no study to our knowledge has established empirical cause-effect relations between F P , walking speed, and metabolic cost, even in young adults. To overcome the potential linkage between these factors, we used a self-paced treadmill controller and real-time biofeedback to independently prescribe walking speed or F P across a range of condition intensities. Walking with larger and smaller F P led to instinctively faster and slower walking speeds, respectively, with about 80% of variance explained between those outcomes. We also found that comparable changes in either F P or walking speed elicited predictable and relatively uniform changes in metabolic cost, each explaining about ∼53% of the variance in net metabolic power and ∼15% of the variance in cost of transport, respectively. These findings build confidence that interventions designed to increase F P will translate to improved walking speed. Repeating this protocol in other populations may identify additional cause-effect relations that could inform the time course of gait decline due to age and disease.","journal":"medRxiv","year":2021,"id":227151,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9509,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":831521,"name":"Jordan N. Feldman","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":277101,"name":"Michael D. Lewek","orcid":"0000-0002-1917-5594","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":277103,"name":"Jason R. Franz","orcid":"0000-0001-9523-9708","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":489184,"name":"Richard E. Pimentel","orcid":"0000-0002-8734-1996","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":39,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:54:42.179886Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}