Word for a specific crutch gait

Question

When looking up some medical terms regarding crutch gait, I found a plethora of resources that detail the different ways how one can properly walk on crutches. One of this ways is the so called "Two-Point Gait". In this "mode", the patient always advances the foot with the crutch on the opposite side of the body.
Have a look at this video for a demonstration: https://youtu.be/qjukAMe3qJE?t=27

Just in case the link goes dead, let me try to illustrate it with a simple drawing (x foot with injury, > other foot, | crutch):

  |   |   |   |
x   x   x   x
  >   >   >   >
|   |   |   |

It does not really matter, but consider the walking direction from left to right.

Long story short, the question is:
Is there a special term for the walking pattern where a patient does the opposite of what is expected and basically puts foot and crutch of the same side forward at the same time?

Using the notation from above, that might look as follows:

|   |   |   |
x   x   x   x
  >   >   >   >
  |   |   |   |

I have heard some people (physiotherapists) refer to this as "Passgang" in German. According to my research, the direct translation is amble^1,2, but the term seems to be primarily used for horses³ (or other animals with four legs) or as a term to describe relaxed walking^3,4,5.

Edit:

Prior to asking this question, I studied the following resources:

• https://www.physio-pedia.com/Crutches
• https://walkeasy.com/explore/crutch-gaits.php
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElZkPye4WtA / https://www.registerednursern.com/crutches-nursing-nclex-review/

@MichaelHarvey, added https://www.verywellhealth.com/how-to-walk-safely-with-crutches-2696295 to the list. Thanks for that!

All these sites describe how to use crutches in various modes, but none of them matches what I'm looking for. My best guess would be, that what I'm looking for is an error on the patient's side, i.e. you would not want the patient to walk like this.

---

¹ https://www.linguee.com/german-english/translation/Passgang.html
² https://de.pons.com/%C3%BCbersetzung/deutsch-englisch/passgang
³ https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/amble
⁴ https://www.lexico.com/definition/amble
⁵ https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/amble

Answer 1

There are no non-medical terms for crutch gaits (that I, as a non-specialist, am aware of). For general four-leg gaits, your first is "trotting" and the second is "pacing. These apply particularly to horses, where some horses trot (moving diagonal legs at the same time) and some pace (moving both left legs at the same time, then both right legs).

An amble (in animal gaits) is a slower pace in which the animal moves Back-left, front-left, back-right, front-right. It is more stable, as there are always three points of contact with the ground.

It would be natural for the terms for four-legged animal locomotion to transfer to humans, when we use our arms with crutches as extra legs.

Answer 2

Wild googling using different combinations of words suggested in the comments, the answer by @JamesK, together with "arm"/"leg"/"same side", and so on surfaced some references to namba (or nanba) walking, seemingly originating from Japanese culture, and also found in martial arts (demonstration at a TEDx talk). But I don't expect this term to be used in medicine.

There also seems to be scientific literature about it (e.g. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266794730_AN_ENERGY-EFFICIENT_LOCOMOTION_SAMURAI-INSPIRED_NAMBA_WALKING), though I cannot judge its reliability. The term ipsilateral movement was used there in the description of Figure 1. Obviously, crutches are not a topic in this paper, but at least from my non-medical perspective, something like ipsilateral crutch gait could work.