Muscle activity during backward and forward running with body weight support

Metabolic Costs During Backward Running with Body Weight Support

“…Following the warm-up, participant's preferred speed was determined during forward and backward running on the LBPP treadmill for each of the BWS conditions. Preferred speed represented the running speed a participant identified as comfortable to maintain for a 30-min run for each condition [11,12]. In order to obtain the preferred speed, each participant was asked to run on the LBPP treadmill at each condition and to increase or decrease the running speed until their most comfortable speed was obtained.…”

“…Recently, Masumoto et al [12] reported similar or higher magnitude of lower extremity muscle activity between forward and backward running with BWS at preferred speed. These observations suggest that backward running may produce similar or higher metabolic, perceptual, and musculoskeletal demands than that of forward running when running with BWS at preferred speed.…”

“…BWS may influence individual's preferred gait patterns of running [11,12]. In fact, muscle activity and stride frequency (SF) during running on the LBPP treadmill decreased with increasing BWS at the individual's preferred speed, although muscle activity patterns remained qualitatively unchanged [12]. Unfortunately, previous studies on preferred gait patterns of running with BWS have focused mainly on biomechanical responses [11,12].…”

“…Furthermore, locomotion not only in a forward direction but also in backward direction can be used during running with BWS [12]. Interestingly, Terblanche et al [16] reported that backward running training improved forward running performance.…”

“…Hoogkamer et al [9] hypothesized that the transfer characteristics may be either related to common gains in cardiovascular fitness/musculoskeletal properties or caused by neural substrates. Recently, Masumoto et al [12] have reported that the change in running direction influenced…”