Females commonly use a landing technique that creates higher impact forces when contacting the ground, thus leading to higher ground reaction force (GRF) acting upon the lower extremities, leading to an increased risk of injury. The lower extremity musculature plays a critical role in absorbing the energy of these impact forces during landing. Understanding how specific muscle groups contribute to ground reaction force may offer insight to creating more advanced landing retraining protocols. The purpose of this study was to observe how lower extremity muscle groups contribute to GRFs during an unanticipated stop-jump task. 3D musculoskeletal simulations of unanticipated stop-jump tasks were completed for five healthy females. Participant-specific scaled musculoskeletal models (modified gait2392) were generated. A pseudo-inverse induced-acceleration analysis was used to determine individual muscle group contribution to 3D GRFs. Means ± standard deviations were calculated for each muscle group during the landing phase. The vasti, soleus, and the gluteus maximus muscle groups were most responsible for bodyweight support, with the vasti and the soleus being the largest contributors (375.84±88.64 N; 267.39±103.70 N, respectively). The vasti group (165.63±74.94 N) were primarily responsible for braking and propulsion. Finally, the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, and vasti group were the major generators in producing a medially-directed GRF, with the vasti group as the largest contributor (118.05±32.83 N). The vasti, soleus, and gluteus maximus appears to be the overall largest contributors to 3D GRFs. Landing retraining protocols may want to consider targeting these muscle groups specifically to improve landing performance and decrease injury risk.
Listed In: Biomechanics, Sports Science, Other