Forefoot Loading during 3 Athletic Tasks

Abstract

The differences in loading patterns based on athletic task are important for understanding potential injury mechanisms. In addition, this information could be important for defining a return to play protocol for athletes who have had specific injuries.

Plantar loading during jumping while wearing a rigid carbon graphite footplate

“…Subjects were given a 30 s rest between trials and a 5-min rest between testing conditions. For analysis, the foot was divided into eight anatomical regions (heel (or rearfoot), medial midfoot, lateral midfoot, medial forefoot, middle forefoot, lateral forefoot, hallux, and the lesser toes) using a percentage mask in the Novel Multiproject-ip software (Novel) [17][18][19][20][21]. The plantar pressure variables that were obtained during all trials were the force-time integral, maximum force, peak pressure, contact time and contact area.…”

“…The seven trials for each testing condition were averaged for statistical analysis. The maximum force was normalized to each subject's body weight and the contact area of the entire foot and each foot region was normalized to the entire insole contact area (NICA) [19]. Statistical analysis was completed using a series of paired ttests in order to examine the differences between the two test conditions (with and without rigid carbon graphite footplate) first during the take-off phase of the jump and then the analysis was completed again to examine the landing phase (a < 0.05) for each of the study variables of interest.…”

A Comparative Review of Footwear-Based Wearable Systems

“…The information derived from plantar pressure measurement can also assist in identification and treatments of the impairments associated with various musculoskeletal and neurological disorders [29]. Hence, plantar pressure measurement is important in the area of biomedical research for gait and posture analysis [11,30,31], sport biomechanics [32,33], footwear and shoe insert design [34], and improving balance in the elderly [35], among other applications.…”

Can subjective comfort be used as a measure of plantar pressure in football boots?

“…These differences in footwear design have been shown to create around 35 % higher forefoot plantar pressures when walking in football boots in comparison to running shoes (Santos et al, 2001). The high plantar pressures seen in football boots are believed to cause an increased risk of metatarsalgia and metatarsal stress fractures (Debiasio et al, 2013;Eils et al, 2004;Queen et al, 2007;Sims et al, 2008;Warden et al, 2007). The incidence rate of metatarsal stress fractures in male professional football was shown to be 0.04 injuries per 1,000 hours (Ekstrand and van Dijk, 2013) -the rate for amateurs is yet unknown.…”

“…For football boots, the relationships between plantar pressures and athletic drill (Debiasio et al, 2013;Queen et al, 2007;Sims et al, 2008;Wong et al, 2007), sex (Debiasio et al, 2013;Sims et al, 2008), surface type (Ford et al, 2006), and different boot designs (Bentley et al, 2011;Santos et al, 2001) have previously been investigated. However, only one study (Nunns et al, 2015) has been conducted on the relationship between objective measures of plantar pressure and subjective data for football boots.…”