Elsevier

Gait & Posture

Volume 32, Issue 1, May 2010, Pages 136-140
Gait & Posture

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Hamstring muscle forces prior to and immediately following an acute sprinting-related muscle strain injury

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gaitpost.2010.03.006Get rights and content

Abstract

A thorough understanding of the biomechanics of the hamstrings during sprinting is required to optimise injury rehabilitation and prevention strategies. The main aims of this study were to compare hamstrings load across different modes of locomotion as well as before and after an acute sprinting-related muscle strain injury. Bilateral kinematic and ground reaction force data were captured from a single subject whilst walking, jogging and sprinting prior to and immediately following a significant injury involving the right semitendinosis and biceps femoris long head muscles. Experimental data were input into a three-dimensional musculoskeletal model of the body and used, together with optimisation theory, to determine lower-limb muscle forces for each locomotor task. Hamstrings load was found to be greatest during terminal swing for sprinting. The hamstrings contributed the majority of the terminal swing hip extension and knee flexion torques, whilst gluteus maximus contributed most of the stance phase hip extension torque. Gastrocnemius contributed little to the terminal swing knee flexion torque. Peak hamstrings force was also substantially greater during terminal swing compared to stance for sprinting, but not for walking and jogging. Immediately following the muscle strain injury, the hamstrings demonstrated an intolerance to perform an eccentric-type contraction. Whilst peak hamstrings force during terminal swing did not decrease post-injury, both peak hamstrings length and negative work during terminal swing were considerably reduced. These results lend support to the paradigm that the hamstrings are most susceptible to muscle strain injury during the terminal swing phase of sprinting when they are contracting eccentrically.

Introduction

Hamstring strains commonly occur whilst sprinting [1], [2]. In order to optimise injury rehabilitation and prevention strategies, a thorough understanding of hamstrings function during sprinting is required. Computer-based musculoskeletal models have recently been utilised for this purpose, however, existing data are limited to treadmill sprinting and to the swing phase portion of the sprinting cycle [3], [4]. In the current study, lower-limb muscle forces were determined using a unique dataset captured from a single subject whilst walking, jogging and sprinting prior to and immediately following a hamstring strain. Preliminary analyses of this dataset involving joint kinematics and inverse dynamics only have already been published [5]. In this study, new analyses were performed that aimed to: (a) evaluate the relative contributions of the primary hip extensor and knee flexor muscles to the net sagittal-plane hip and knee joint torques measured for sprinting; (b) compare hamstrings load across the different modes of locomotion; (c) determine if asymmetries in the biomechanics of the hamstrings were evident for sprinting; and (d) compare hamstrings load pre- and post-injury.

Section snippets

Materials and methods

Data were acquired from a male Australian Rules football player (height = 186.0 cm; body mass = 91.5 kg; age = 20.3 years). The study was approved by the institutional Human Research Ethics Committee and written informed consent was obtained. Kinematic data were recorded using a 3D motion analysis system with eight cameras sampling at 120 Hz. Three force-plates centred within a calibrated measurement volume of 4 m in length recorded all ground reaction force data. Thirty-six reflective markers were

Results

The walking and jogging speeds were 1.18 and 1.97 m/s, respectively. The average (±1 S.D.) sprinting speed for the pre-injury trials was 7.44 ± 0.10 m/s. The sprinting speed for the injury trial was 6.93 m/s. For sprinting, the hamstrings contributed most of the terminal swing hip extension and knee flexion torques (Fig. 1, top panels), whilst gluteus maximus contributed most of the stance phase hip extension torque (Fig. 1, left middle panel). Gastrocnemius contributed little to the terminal swing

Discussion

This study found that hamstrings load for sprinting was greatest during terminal swing. The hamstrings provided a large contribution to the hip extensor and knee flexor torques during terminal swing for sprinting (Fig. 1, top panels) and, in contrast to walking and jogging, peak hamstrings force for sprinting was considerably greater during terminal swing compared to stance (Table 1; Fig. 2, top panels). This result is consistent with electromyographic data during sprinting reported by

Conflict of interest statement

None declared.

Acknowledgements

Financial support for this project was provided by the Physiotherapy Research Foundation Tagged Sports Physiotherapy Australia Research Grant (T08-THE/SPA(1)018), a Victorian Endowment for Science, Knowledge and Innovation (VESKI) Fellowship, and an Australian Research Council Discovery Project Grant (DP0772838).

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