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The arm-swing motion is important for coordinated lower limb movement during a fast sprint and is composed of three-dimensional scapulothoracic and glenohumeral joint motion. Here, we aimed to clarify the role of the scapula during the initiation of a sprint running when sprinter run with high horizontal acceleration. Ten sports-active students participated in four 5-m dashes, with scapular constraint using non-elastic therapy tape (constraint condition) and without scapular constraint (free condition). The sprinting kinematics was assessed by a 16-camera motion capture system. In the constraint condition, the 2-m sprint time was significantly longer than that in the free condition. At the instants of foot-contact and take-off during the first step, no significant difference in the humerothoracic flexion angle was seen between these two conditions. In contrast, at the instants of foot-contact and take-off during the first step, the humerothoracic extension angle in the constraint condition was significantly smaller than that in the free condition. The forward leaning vector angle of center of mass during the first step was significantly greater than that in the constraint condition. Although no significant difference in hip extension and foot forward leaning angles was seen at the instant of foot contact during the first step between the two conditions, at the instant of take-off, the hip extension and foot forward leaning angles in the constraint condition were significantly smaller than those in the free condition. Therefore, scapular behavior in first accelerated running contributes to larger upper- and lower-limb motions and facilitates coordinating whole-body balance for a fast sprint.

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AYUMI EYE is an accelerometer-based gait analysis device that measures the 3D accelerations of the human trunk. This study investigated the measurement accuracy of the AYUMI EYE as hardware as well as the accuracy of the gait cycle extraction program via simultaneous measurements using AYUMI EYE, a ground reaction force (GRF), and an optical motion capture system called VICON. The study was conducted with four healthy individuals as participants. The gait data were obtained by simulating four different patterns for three trials each: normal walking, anterior-tilt walking, hemiplegic walking, and shuffling walking. The AYUMI EYE and VICON showed good agreement for both the acceleration and displacement data. The durations of subsequent stride cycles calculated using the AYUMI EYE and GRF were in good agreement based on the calculated cross-correlation coefficients (CCs) with an r value of 0.896 and p-value less than 0.05, and their accuracies for these results were sufficient.