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. 2010 Oct 19;43(14):2709-16.
doi: 10.1016/j.jbiomech.2010.06.025. Epub 2010 Aug 9.

Muscle contributions to propulsion and support during running

Samuel R Hamner  1 , Ajay Seth, Scott L Delp
Affiliations

Muscle contributions to propulsion and support during running

Samuel R Hamner et al. J Biomech. .

Abstract

Muscles actuate running by developing forces that propel the body forward while supporting the body's weight. To understand how muscles contribute to propulsion (i.e., forward acceleration of the mass center) and support (i.e., upward acceleration of the mass center) during running we developed a three-dimensional muscle-actuated simulation of the running gait cycle. The simulation is driven by 92 musculotendon actuators of the lower extremities and torso and includes the dynamics of arm motion. We analyzed the simulation to determine how each muscle contributed to the acceleration of the body mass center. During the early part of the stance phase, the quadriceps muscle group was the largest contributor to braking (i.e., backward acceleration of the mass center) and support. During the second half of the stance phase, the soleus and gastrocnemius muscles were the greatest contributors to propulsion and support. The arms did not contribute substantially to either propulsion or support, generating less than 1% of the peak mass center acceleration. However, the arms effectively counterbalanced the vertical angular momentum of the lower extremities. Our analysis reveals that the quadriceps and plantarflexors are the major contributors to acceleration of the body mass center during running.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Snapshots from a simulation of the running gait cycle. The simulation starts at left foot contact and ends at subsequent left foot contact, with a total duration of 0.683 s. Muscle color indicates simulated activation level from fully activated (red) to fully deactivated (blue). Axes show propulsion as forward acceleration of the body mass center, braking as backward acceleration of the mass center, and support as upward acceleration of the mass center.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Kinematics of the back, pelvis, and lower extremities during the running gait cycle. The gray line represents experimental joint angles calculated by inverse kinematics, while the dashed line represents simulated joint angles produced by computed muscle control. Toe-off is indicated by a vertical line at 40% of the gait cycle.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Comparison of moments about the lumbar and lower extremity joints during the running gait cycle, normalized by body mass, computed using the residual reduction algorithm (solid line), and by summing the moments generated by muscle forces in the simulation (dashed line). Toe-off is indicated by a vertical line at 40% of the gait cycle.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Comparison of simulated muscle activations from computed muscle control (solid line), experimental EMG collected from the subject (dashed line), and speed-matched experimental EMG data (Cappellini et al., 2006) (gray area). The experimental EMG data are individually normalized to the maximum recorded signal of each muscle over the trial and simulated activations are defined to be between 0 (fully deactivated) and 1 (fully activated). Toeoff is indicated by a vertical line at 40% of the gait cycle.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Muscle contributions to propulsion and support of the body mass center during the stance phase of running. Stance is defined as 0-40% of the running gait cycle. Each ray is the resultant vector of the vertical and fore-aft accelerations (axes scaled equally). The body mass center acceleration, calculated from the experimentally measured ground reaction force, is shown at the top left. “All muscles” represents the sum of contributions from all muscle actuators in the model, which is plotted on top of the body mass center acceleration due to ground reaction forces (gray).
Figure 6
Figure 6
The angular momentum of the arms (dashedline) and legs (solidline) computed about the vertical axis passing through the body mass center during the running gait cycle.
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