Background: Accomplishment of a series of successive hops is an advanced motor skill and requires adequate timing and coordination. Hopping on one leg performance might therefore be a more sensitive test with higher discriminatory power than ordinary gait in evaluating motor competence both in healthy and diseased children.
Objective: The purpose of the study was to develop a normative sample on walking at a normalized speed of 1.5 m/s and hopping on one leg parameters in children 7-12 years of age, and to evaluate the influence of age and gender on the different parameters.
Method: 360 girls and boys between 7 and 12 years participated in the study. All data were collected using the GAITRite system. The children were instructed to walk at four different speeds and to hop on either leg with as long serial jumps as possible across the whole walkway.
Results: There was an increase in absolute step length of 15% from 7 to 12 years of age. However, for normalized step length there was no increase. The total increase in absolute and normalized hop length from 7 to 12 years was 64% and 36%, respectively. Multiple regression analysis displayed a significant increase for absolute and normalized hopping length with age.
Conclusion: While step length only showed a small increase from 7 to 12 years of age, hop length showed significant increase both in absolute and normalized values. The variability, however, was large, indicating that a normative sample of hop length measurements includes a wide range of values for each age group.