Why does the metabolic cost of walking increase on compliant substrates?

Walking on compliant substrates requires more energy than walking on hard substrates, but the biomechanical factors that contribute to this increase are debated. Previous studies suggest various causative mechanical factors, including disruption to pendular energy recovery, increased muscle work, decreased muscle efficiency and increased gait variability. We test each of these hypotheses simultaneously by collecting a large kinematic and kinetic data set of human walking on foams of differing thickness. This allowed us to systematically characterise changes in gait with substrate compliance, and, by combining data with mechanical substrate testing, drive the very first subject-specific computer simulations of human locomotion on compliant substrates to estimate the internal kinetic demands on the musculoskeletal system. Negative changes to pendular energy exchange or ankle mechanics are not supported by our analyses. Instead, we find that the mechanistic causes of increased energetic co..., , Matlab
R
Qualisys Track Manager