This paper introduces the use of Gaussian mixture models (GMM) for discriminating multiple classes of limb motions using continuous myoelectric signals (MES). The purpose of this work is to investigate an optimum configuration of a GMM-based limb motion classification scheme. For this effort, a complete experimental evaluation of the Gaussian mixture motion model is conducted on a 12-subject database. The experiments examine algorithmic issues of the GMM including the model order selection and variance limiting. The final classification performance of this GMM system has been compared with that of three other classifiers (a linear discriminant analysis (LDA), a linear perceptron neural network (LP) and a multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural network) . The Gaussian mixture motion model attains 96.3% classification accuracy using four channel MES for distinguishing six limb motions and is shown to outperform the other motion modeling techniques on an identical six limb motion task.