Trunk muscle activation patterns during walking at different speeds

Anders, C.; Wagner, Heiko; Puta, Christian; Grassme, Roland; Petrovitch, A.; Scholle, Hans‐Christoph

doi:10.1016/j.jelekin.2006.01.002

Cited by 127 publications

(130 citation statements)

References 39 publications

(49 reference statements)

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“…Chiu et al [15] has demonstrated that changes in electromyographic activities in the lumbar spinae, biceps femoris, and medial gastrocnemius muscles showed a marked increase with an increase in walking speed. Anders et al [16] has also demonstrated that the electromyography (EMG) of the lumbar erector spinae muscle changed in activity amplitude, but not in activity pattern, with an increase in walking speed in healthy subjects. Furthermore, Thorstensson et al [17] has documented with electromyographic analysis that the main function of the lumbar erector spinae muscle is to restrict excessive trunk movements during walking.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Association of walking speed with sagittal spinal alignment, muscle thickness, and echo intensity of lumbar back muscles in middle-aged and elderly women

et al. 2015

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Association of walking speed with sagittal spinal alignment, muscle thickness, and echo intensity of lumbar back muscles in middle-aged and elderly women

et al. 2015

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“…All analyses were performed by custom programs using the MATLAB (MathWorks) environment (48,49). EMGs were sampled and analyzed on a stride-by-stride basis.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The musculoskeletal system of humans is not tuned to maximize the economy of locomotion

Carrier

Anders

Schilling

2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Humans are known to have energetically optimal walking and running speeds at which the cost to travel a given distance is minimized. We hypothesized that "optimal" walking and running speeds would also exist at the level of individual locomotor muscles. Additionally, because humans are 60-70% more economical when they walk than when they run, we predicted that the different muscles would exhibit a greater degree of tuning to the energetically optimal speed during walking than during running. To test these hypotheses, we used electromyography to measure the activity of 13 muscles of the back and legs over a range of walking and running speeds in human subjects and calculated the cumulative activity required from each muscle to traverse a kilometer. We found that activity of each of these muscles was minimized at specific walking and running speeds but the different muscles were not tuned to a particular speed in either gait. Although humans are clearly highly specialized for terrestrial locomotion compared with other great apes, the results of this study indicate that our locomotor muscles are not tuned to specific walking or running speeds and, therefore, do not maximize the economy of locomotion. This pattern may have evolved in response to selection to broaden the range of sustainable running speeds, to improve performance in motor behaviors not related to endurance locomotion, or in response to selection for both.cost of transport | human evolution | persistence hunting | locomotor energetics | electromyography T he energetic cost to travel a given distance, the cost of transport (COT), has long been known to strongly depend on walking speed in humans (1, 2). The cost is minimized at intermediate walking speeds of 4.5-5.4 km·h −1 (1.25-1.5 m·s −1 ) and rises rapidly as speed increases above or decreases below this optimum. In contrast, the metabolic cost to run a given distance is generally recognized to be independent of speed in humans (2-6). Recently, however, a reevaluation of the COT in running humans has shown that humans also have energetically optimal speeds when running (7). This study relied on repeated measures from individual subjects, an approach that had the potential to identify the subtle relationship observed. There are at least three reasons to expect the COT to depend on locomotor speed. First, the force that a muscle generates decreases as its shortening velocity increases in a hyperbolic relationship. As a consequence of this relationship, a muscle's capacity to perform work and its energetic efficiency are highest at intermediate shortening velocities (8). Thus, if there is a relationship between locomotor speed and muscle shortening velocity, the force-velocity relationship may account for the COT being lowest at intermediate walking or running speeds. Note that this relationship is unlikely to explain energetically optimal speeds in both walking and running gaits because the shortening velocity of muscles in these two gaits will most often be very different. Second, the external mechan...

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“…[16]. In fact, these authors compared its activation patterns at the initiation of gait and during walking and identified metachronal descending patterns in both activities, with a double burst of activity not only at lumbar level as reported by other authors [14,17,18] but more interestingly at each spinal level during walking. Furthermore, they also reported [16] that one of these bursts propagates rostro-caudally (from C7 to L3).…”

Section: Authors Muscle Obliquus Internus Abdominismentioning

confidence: 61%

“…Moreover, they [14] showed that erector spinae and multifidus, during walking over a treadmill, had some slight differences in respect to the activation patterns reported by Perry [12]. In fact, multifidus was active at both heel contacts (ipsilateral and contralateral side) whereas erector spinae was active only during the contralateral contact.…”

Section: Authors Muscle Obliquus Internus Abdominismentioning

confidence: 86%

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Physiological Electromyographic Activation Patterns of Trunk Muscles During Walking

Cioni¹,

Pisasale²,

Abela³

et al. 2010

TOREHJ

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Abstract:It is well known that, in spite of its crucial role in the posture, locomotion and voluntary movements, trunk has received less consideration from researchers than upper and lower limbs. On the other hand, rehabilitative interventions of patients with upper motoneuron syndrome have always been focused firstly on treatment and recovery of trunk's posture during standing, sitting and walking.Trunk is a complex anatomical structure and it is composed by a large variety of bones, articulations, ligaments and muscles. From a functional point of view, trunk muscles have been subdivided into two systems: a local system which ensures stability and a global system which enables movements. Muscles of these two systems work by eccentric and concentric contractions, according to the functional needs.Surprisingly, in the literature are reported only a few studies regarding the trunk muscle activations during walking. These studies investigated the electromyographic activation patterns in different experimental conditions as walking on a walkway, over a treadmill at different velocities, in water or in deep-water. Furthermore, data analysis was differently performed by analyzing the qualitative and quantitative features of timing and amplitude of electromyographic recordings for each muscle or by other more sophisticated methods as cluster analysis or principal components analysis. Finally, some variability has been observed in the normal population also including sex differences. The aim of this review is to show the state of art of this topic, in normal subjects.

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Trunk muscle activation patterns during walking at different speeds

Cited by 127 publications

References 39 publications

Association of walking speed with sagittal spinal alignment, muscle thickness, and echo intensity of lumbar back muscles in middle-aged and elderly women

Association of walking speed with sagittal spinal alignment, muscle thickness, and echo intensity of lumbar back muscles in middle-aged and elderly women

The musculoskeletal system of humans is not tuned to maximize the economy of locomotion

Physiological Electromyographic Activation Patterns of Trunk Muscles During Walking

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