Falls threaten the quality of life of older adults and are associated with tremendous economic costs. Slips and trips are the two major causes of falls during locomotion and each requires a different postural response to prevent falling. However, a critical requirement in maintaining balance in either is the ability to generate proactive postural adjustments. Older adults have been shown to adopt proactive postural adjustments during repeated exposure to initially novel perturbations. However, the extent to which such learning applied to gait was unknown. This dissertation investigated reducing the incidence of falls in older adults through learning anticipatory adjustments to perturbations during gait based on a systems model theory. Potential associations between age and anticipatory postural strategies when repeatedly exposed to forward slips were studied. Forward vs. backward walking slips were also compared to examine the impact of gait novelty on the ability to generate proactive adjustments. The impact of knowledge of the type of perturbation on the ability to generate proactive adjustments and whether such adjustments change with experience and when the nature of the perturbation was also investigated. Subjects were exposed to multiple slip and trip perturbations to investigate these differences and to compare how young and older adults alter their proactive adjustments. As anticipatory behavior improves perturbation recovery outcomes, changes in measures of severity with increased exposure were also analyzed. This study found young and older adults adopt proactive postural adjustments when repeatedly exposed to forward slips and make internal representations applicable to a novel task. Awareness of a perturbation proved sufficient to induce proactive adaptations and with experience, adaptations became perturbation specific to reduce slip and trip risk in both age groups. Perturbation recovery improved with multiple exposures in both age groups as decreases in severity measures were observed. This study opens the door to studies evaluating the retention of postural control motor skills adapted through training and prior experiences and sheds light on the benefits of a systems model theory based fall intervention program for slips and trips.