Quantifying foot placement variability and dynamic stability of movement to assess control mechanisms during forward and lateral running

Abstract

Research has indicated that human walking is more unstable in the secondary, rather than primary plane of progression. However, the mechanisms of controlling dynamic stability in different planes of progression during running remain unknown. The aim of this study was to compare variability (standard deviation and coefficient of variation) and dynamic stability (sample entropy and local divergence exponent) in anterior-posterior and medio-lateral directions in forward and lateral running patterns. For this purpose, fifteen healthy, male participants ran in a forward and lateral direction on a treadmill at their preferred running speeds. Coordinate data of passive reflective markers attached to body segments were recorded using a motion capture system. Results indicated that: (1) there is lower dynamic stability in the primary plane of progression during both forward and lateral running suggesting that, unlike walking, greater control might be required to regulate dynamic stability in the primary plane of progression during running, (2) as in walking, the control of stability in anterior-posterior and medio-lateral directions of running is dependent on the direction of progression, and (3), quantifying magnitude of variability might not be sufficient to understand control mechanisms in human movement and directly measuring dynamic stability could be an appropriate alternative.

Correlation between non-dominant foot placement variability with acceleration and agility performance in handball players

“…It could be suggested, that it is to a larger extent connected to a constant demand to preserve stability of the body's center of mass trajectory during running. This is the primary variable that needs to be controlled during forward running at high speed (Arshi, Mehdizadeh, & Davids, 2015).…”

“…Such example is a simple forward and backward body oscillation task during an upright stance where two modes are concerned with puling the body forward or backwards respectively and the third mode is concerned with holding the mediallateral stability (Danna-Dos-Santos, Slomka, Zatsiorsky, Latash, 2007). Studies of running indicate that similar strategies are used to control body's stability during forward or lateral running where anterior-posterior and medial-lateral stability are controlled differently (Arshi, Mehdizadeh, & Davids, 2015). This would suggest that medial-lateral stability during running is not necessarily connected to the forward propulsion.…”

“…Moreover, the foot placement has been shown to vary during running and thus influences the stability of running (Arshi, Mehdizadeh, & Davids, 2015). However, no studies have systematically studied the role of the Horizontalno ubrzanje i spretnost su suštinski deo sportskih performansi u rukometu.…”

Gait Variability and Complexity during Single and Dual-Task Walking on Different Surfaces in Outdoor Environment

“…RMS is an indicator of acceleration data dispersion around zero [ 24 ] and indicates the magnitude of acceleration [ 25 ]. However, computing the magnitude of variability may not be sufficient to understand the human movement control mechanisms [ 26 ]. Therefore, an alternative analysis (i.e., nonlinear methods) derived from the theory of stochastic dynamics, came to the fore, although evaluation of gait variability is still recommended due to the presumed accuracy in identifying subtle changes in walking owing to pathological disorders or illnesses and with the assumption that higher variability indicates reduced consistency and a more unstable gait pattern [ 27 ].…”

“…Higher values of SampEn correspond to a lower similarity of the system which results in higher complexity, in other words, higher values indicate less periodicity, less regularity and more unpredictability [ 28 ]. Thus, regularity in the time series could be an indirect indicator of dynamic stability in the human gait [ 26 , 29 ]. Additionally, SampEn has also shown higher reliability for short data sets, which are commonly analysed in gait studies [ 30 ] and slightly higher sensitivity to changes in gait dynamics [ 31 ].…”