Gait Analysis Clinic in London
Professional biomechanical assessment to identify movement problems causing pain. Optimise your gait for injury prevention, pain relief, and better performance.
What Is Gait Analysis?
Gait analysis is a comprehensive biomechanical assessment of how your body moves during walking and running. While everyone walks, many people have abnormal movement patterns—overpronation, underpronation, improper foot strike, or postural deviations—that cause pain, dysfunction, and injury.
Professional gait analysis identifies these movement abnormalities and their causes. Understanding your specific biomechanical problems allows us to prescribe targeted treatments: custom orthotics, specific exercises, activity modifications, and footwear recommendations. This approach addresses root causes rather than just treating symptoms.
Key advantage: Gait analysis provides objective evidence of how your body moves. This allows precise prescription of treatments tailored to your specific biomechanical problems, resulting in more effective pain relief and injury prevention.
Why Gait Analysis Matters
Your feet are the foundation of your entire body. Abnormal foot mechanics create a cascade of problems:
Abnormal Foot Motion
When your foot doesn't move properly during walking and running, it creates abnormal stresses on tissues. This leads to pain in your feet and can set off a chain reaction affecting your ankles, knees, hips, and back.
Compensatory Stress
Your body adapts to abnormal foot mechanics by creating compensatory movements elsewhere. This causes muscles to work inefficiently and joints to experience unusual stresses, leading to pain in locations far from the root cause.
Recurrent Injury
Treating pain without addressing the underlying biomechanical cause leads to recurrent injury. The same problems keep happening because the root cause hasn't been corrected. Gait analysis breaks this cycle.
Athletic Performance
Even small inefficiencies in gait waste energy and reduce athletic performance. Optimizing biomechanics through gait analysis improves running efficiency, speed, and endurance while reducing injury risk.
What Our Gait Analysis Assesses
Foot Strike Pattern
We assess where your foot contacts the ground during walking and running. This can be heel strike, midfoot strike, or forefoot strike. The foot strike pattern affects stress distribution and injury risk. Some patterns are more efficient or appropriate for certain activities.
Pronation/Supination
We evaluate how much your foot rolls inward (pronation) or outward (supination) during walking and running. Excessive pronation (overpronation) or underpronation causes abnormal stresses and is a common cause of foot and leg pain.
Arch Motion
Your arch should support your foot and absorb shock. We assess whether your arch is functioning normally, or if problems like excessive flattening or lack of motion are contributing to pain or dysfunction.
Pressure Distribution
We measure or observe where pressure concentrates in your feet during walking and running. High-pressure areas indicate abnormal stress that can cause pain, calluses, or other complications. Proper distribution is essential for pain-free function.
Knee Alignment
Knee position during walking reflects foot biomechanics. Inward knee collapse (valgus stress) or outward deviation (varus stress) often originates from foot position and can be corrected through foot orthotics.
Hip & Postural Alignment
Your hip position and overall posture during movement reflect your biomechanics from the ground up. We assess alignment to identify compensatory patterns and postural deviations affecting performance and causing pain.
Walking Speed & Cadence
We assess your natural walking speed and step frequency (cadence). These factors affect movement mechanics and injury risk. Adjustments to cadence and speed can sometimes reduce pain and improve efficiency.
Foot & Ankle Range of Motion
Limited motion in your feet and ankles affects how forces are distributed and may require compensation elsewhere. We assess flexibility and identify movement restrictions contributing to dysfunction.
The Gait Analysis Process
Initial Assessment
We review your medical history, discuss your pain or concerns, and assess your baseline physical condition. We evaluate foot structure, ankle mobility, and any visible biomechanical abnormalities while standing.
Walking Observation
You walk at your natural pace while we observe from multiple angles. We assess your natural gait pattern, any asymmetries, and movement abnormalities. This may be recorded on video for detailed analysis.
Running Assessment (if appropriate)
If you're a runner or athlete, we observe your running gait. Running patterns may differ significantly from walking patterns, so both are often assessed. This helps identify running-specific biomechanical problems.
Advanced Biomechanical Testing
When available, we may use force plate analysis to measure ground reaction forces, pressure mapping to show pressure distribution, or other advanced technology to capture objective biomechanical data.
Video Review & Analysis
If video was recorded, we review it in detail, highlighting specific movement patterns and abnormalities. Video playback often helps patients understand their biomechanical problems better.
Findings & Recommendations
We explain our findings, identify the biomechanical causes of your pain or dysfunction, and prescribe specific treatments. This may include custom orthotics, specific exercises, activity modifications, footwear recommendations, and further treatment options.
Treatment Recommendations Based on Analysis
Custom Orthotics
If gait analysis reveals biomechanical abnormalities, custom orthotics can be prescribed to correct foot motion and optimise alignment.
Footwear Recommendations
Specific shoe types (motion control, neutral cushioning, flexible, etc.) are recommended based on your gait pattern and foot type.
Strengthening Exercises
Weak muscles are often identified as contributing factors. Specific exercises target muscle groups to improve stability and function.
Stretching Programs
Tight muscles restrict normal motion. Stretching programs target tight areas to restore normal mobility and reduce compensatory stress.
Activity Modification
We provide specific guidance on which activities to avoid or modify, and how to progress activity safely during recovery.
Gait Training
For some patients, specific gait retraining can improve movement patterns and reduce pain. We provide guidance on proper walking and running mechanics.
Cadence Adjustments
Changing step frequency or walking speed can sometimes reduce pain and improve efficiency. We provide specific guidance on optimal cadence for you.
Performance Optimization
For athletes, we provide recommendations to optimise biomechanics for improved performance and injury prevention.
Who Benefits from Gait Analysis?
Gait analysis is beneficial for:
People with foot, ankle, knee, hip, or back pain to identify biomechanical causes
Athletes and runners to optimise performance and prevent injury
People recovering from injury to ensure proper biomechanics during rehabilitation
People with recurrent injuries to break the injury cycle by addressing root causes
People considering surgery to explore biomechanical alternatives first
Active individuals who want to maintain activity levels and prevent future problems
Start with a professional gait analysis to understand your biomechanics.
Book Your Gait Analysis