Length and moment arm of human leg muscles as a function of knee and hip-joint angles

Abstract

Lengths of muscle tendon complexes of the quadriceps femoris muscle and some of its heads, biceps femoris and gastrocnemius muscles, were measured for six limbs of human cadavers as a function of knee and hip-joint angles. Length-angle curves were fitted using second degree polynomials. Using these polynomials the relationships between knee and hip-joint angles and moment arms were calculated. The effect of changing the hip angle on the biceps femoris muscle length is much larger than that of changing the knee angle. For the rectus femoris muscle the reverse was found. The moment arm of the biceps femoris muscle was found to remain constant throughout the whole range of knee flexion as was the case for the medial part of the vastus medialis muscle. Changes in the length of the lateral part of the vastus medialis muscle as well as the medial part of the vastus lateralis muscle are very similar to those of vastus intermedius muscle to which they are adjacent, while those changes in the length of the medial part of the vastus medialis muscle and the lateral part of the vastus lateralis muscle, which are similar to each other, differ substantially from those of the vastus intermedius muscle. Application of the results to jumping showed that bi-articular rectus femoris and biceps femoris muscles, which are antagonists, both contract eccentrically early in the push off phase and concentrically in last part of this phase.

Extramuscular myofascial force transmission within the rat anterior tibial compartment: proximo‐distal differences in muscle force

“…In general, the effects of moving joints at either the distal or proximal end of a muscle are considered as similar in nature and additive (e.g. Grieve et al 1978, Visser et al 1990. For an isolated muscle that may be true, e.g.…”

Effect of estrogen on tendon collagen synthesis, tendon structural characteristics, and biomechanical properties in postmenopausal women

“…Synchronized values of patellar tendon elongation [change in length (⌬L)] (obtained from ultrasound recordings) and patellar tendon forces [change in force (⌬F)] were sampled during the ramp contractions. Tendon forces were calculated by dividing measured knee extension moments by moment arms estimated from individual femur lengths (57). Subsequently, all trials were analyzed to a greatest common patellar tendon force for all subjects (2,443 N) to take into account small differences in individual peak knee extension moment.…”

Muscle fascicle shortening behaviour of vastus lateralis during a maximal force–velocity test

“…The individual lengths of the muscle-tendon unit and moment arm were obtained using anthropometric model 1 3 and the knee joint angle (Visser et al 1990). B-mode images were created from ultrasonic raw data using a conventional beam formation (i.e., applying a time delay operation to compensate for travel time differences).…”