Internal Tibial Forces and Moments During Graded Running

Abstract

The stress experienced by the tibia has contributions from the forces and moments acting on the tibia. We sought to quantify the influence of running grade on internal tibial forces and moments. Seventeen participants ran at 3.33 m/s on an instrumented treadmill at 0°, ±5°, and ±10° while motion data were captured. Ankle joint contact force was estimated from an anthropometrically-scaled musculoskeletal model using inverse dynamics-based static optimization. Internal tibial forces and moments were quantified at the distal 1/3rd of the tibia, by ensuring static equilibrium with all applied forces and moments. Downhill running conditions resulted in lower peak internal axial force (range of mean differences: -9 to -16%, p<0.001), lower peak internal anteroposterior force (-14 to -21%, p<0.001), and lower peak internal mediolateral force (-14 to -15%, p<0.001), compared to 0° and +5°. Furthermore, downhill conditions resulted in lower peak internal mediolateral moment (-11 to -21%, p<0.001), lower peak internal anteroposterior moment (-13 to -14%, p<0.001), and lower peak internal torsional moment (-9 to -21%, p<0.001), compared to 0°, +5°, and +10°. The +10° condition resulted in lower peak internal axial force (-7 to -9%, p<0.001) and lower peak internal mediolateral force (-9%, p=0.004), compared to 0° and +5°. These findings suggest that downhill running may be associated with lower tibial stresses than either level or uphill running.

Tibial loading and damage accumulation in recreational and competitive male runners during a demanding 10 km run

“…Competitive runners ran with a step length that was 30% longer than recreational runners when normalized to height and 34% longer in absolute terms (CR: 1.67 (0.12) m versus RR: 1.25 (0.07) m). stance, whilst the posterior tibia was predominantly under compression, in line with earlier findings (Baggaley et al, 2021;Derrick et al, 2016;Meardon et al, 2014Meardon et al, , 2015Rice et al, 2019Rice et al, , 2023Yang et al, 2014). As hypothesized, the competitive runners experienced greater peak tibial bending moments than the recreational runners.…”

“…The bending moments about the medial–lateral (ML) tibial centroid axis (i.e., sagittal plane) contribute to anterior and posterior tibial stresses. ML bending moments provide an indication of tibial loading and were estimated at a centroid representing the distal one‐third of the tibia in MATLAB (R2021a, MathWorks) in a customized program, using methods similar to those reported previously (Baggaley et al., 2021; Meardon et al., 2014; Rice et al., 2019). Internal forces and moments were estimated by ensuring static equilibrium at each 1% of the stance phase (Baggaley et al., 2021; Rice et al., 2019).…”

“…ML bending moments provide an indication of tibial loading and were estimated at a centroid representing the distal one‐third of the tibia in MATLAB (R2021a, MathWorks) in a customized program, using methods similar to those reported previously (Baggaley et al., 2021; Meardon et al., 2014; Rice et al., 2019). Internal forces and moments were estimated by ensuring static equilibrium at each 1% of the stance phase (Baggaley et al., 2021; Rice et al., 2019). Muscular forces were estimated from 11 muscles that span the tibial centroid.…”

Acute Effects of Gait Interventions on Tibial Loads During Running: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

“…Reductions in accelerometry-based loads are also likely indicative of a ‘softer’ foot strike. There is recent evidence to suggest that ‘softer’ foot strike or running in a more flexed posture could increase muscle forces during running, causing an increase in bone loading that may be missed by accelerometry measures [ 80 ]. It has been identified that for every 1 g increase in peak positive acceleration, the likelihood of having a history of TSF increases by a factor of 1.361 [ 35 ].…”

Effect of increased running speed and weight carriage on peak and cumulative tibial loading

“…Bending moments (M BE ) at the distal third of the tibia in the tibial coordinate system were estimated using a customized MATLAB program (MATLAB R2022a, Math-Works). M BE were calculated about the medial-lateral (ML) axis (i.e., sagittal plane bending contributing to anterior-posterior stress), based on earlier methods [31][32][33][34][35] and using the same calculations as previously described. 36 The resultant M BE is the sum of internal muscular forces and external reaction forces.…”