Body Weight Supported Treadmill: Exercising Longer, Faster & With Less Stress

Have you been told you should start a walking program or other form of cardiovascular exercise, but joint pain is preventing you from starting? Are you recovering from an injury and need to start putting in miles but are limited with weight-bearing status? One option for you may be to use a treadmill with a system to support your body weight. These systems allow for more exercise with lower impact on your joints, and can help assist with recovery from injury, stepwise return to walking or running, as well as provide a way for people to maintain speed while lowering demands on the heart and cardiovascular system. 

At KPT, we use a Lightspeed Lift with our treadmill to provide body weight support through use of a bungee system. This an easy system to set up and use as you can see from the video below that allows a variety of training and rehab purposes. When using this system there is a significant decrease in ground reaction force (the force through the joints in your legs) for both walking and running when compared to running on a treadmill without the extra support (1). This extra support allows for a range of uses (2).

Injury rehabilitation: Allow a safe environment to start a gradual return to weight bearing, walking, and/or running. The extra support allows for earlier weight bearing and gait training following surgery such as with total knee/hip replacements, ACL reconstructions, Achilles repairs, and microfracture procedures to name a few. Training with bodyweight support may also assist with recovery from a variety of injuries/conditions while allowing you to maintain some training.

·       Management of arthritis pain – decrease loading through the joints

·       Stress fractures/stress reactions – limit force transmission through the injured tissue

·       Low back pain – especially with stenosis

·       Any other injury/condition preventing full weight bearing on one or both limbs

Neurologic recovery: Safe gait training that is effective for greater repetition to work on specific impairments. 

Geriatric: Safe training to work on cardiovascular endurance and improve overall gait speed.

Cardiovascular: Allow people who may be deconditioned to participate in a walking program

General training: Tempo training with lower cardiovascular/metabolic demands and overspeed or HIIT training.

If you are recovering from an injury, were told you need to walk more, or curious how you may be able to incorporate this into your training, please reach out. Our therapists will work to build and supervise a plan to get/keep you moving based on your individual needs and goals.