Sagittal plane lower body angles during overground running with wearable resistance

Field-based sports require athletes to run submaximally over significant distances, often while contending with dynamic perturbations to preferred coordination patterns. The ability to adapt movement such that performance is maintained under such perturbations appears to be trainable. This may be achieved through exposure to task variability, provided there is concomitant exploration of alternate functional states through movement variability. Wearable resistance is a novel training device, which may be well suited to inducing movement variability during running given the changes to limb inertial properties. To investigate this, 14 participants performed 10 submaximal speed shuttle runs with either no weight, 1%, 3%, or 5% of body weight attached to the lower limbs. Sagittal plane lower limb joint kinematics from one complete stride cycle in each run were assessed using functional data analysis techniques. At the group-level, decreases in ankle plantarflexion following toe-off were evid...