Fig. 1

Haptic leash and instrumented cane paradigms. a In the force step change paradigm (Sorrento et al. [26]), participants initially walked with 0 N of leash tension in the pre-force epoch. After ~ 30 s a haptic tensile force of either 10 or 15 N was delivered to the hand in the force epoch. The haptic force was then released after  60 s as participants continued to walk in the post-force epoch for another 60 s. b In the cane paradigm, participants walked on the self-paced treadmill with a stationary instrumented cane for a minimum of 60 s