Rigid soles improve balance in beam walking, but improvements do not persist with bare feet

Maintaining balance while walking on a narrow beam is a challenging motor task. One important factor is that the foot’s ability to exert torque on the support surface is limited by the beam width. Still, the feet serve as a critical interface between the body and the external environment, and it is unclear how the mechanical properties of the feet affect balance. This study examined how constraining the motion of the foot joints with rigid soles influenced balance performance when walking on a beam. We recorded whole-body kinematics of subjects with varying skill levels as they walked on a narrow beam with and without wearing flat, rigid soles on their feet. We computed changes in whole-body motion and angular momentum across the two conditions. Results showed that walking with rigid soles improved balance performance in both expert and novice subjects, but that improvements in balance performance with rigid soles did not affect or transfer to subsequent task performance with bare feet. The absence of any aftereffects suggested that the improved balance performance resulting from constraining the foot joints by a rigid sole was the result of a mechanical effect rather than a change in neural control. Although wearing rigid soles can be used to assist balance, there appears to be limited benefit for training or rehabilitation of balance ability.