Biomechanical Analysis of Running in Elite Sprinters after OpenSim Musculoskeletal Modeling

The study of human movement plays an important role in the sport field. Evaluating running Biomechanics, in terms of kinematic and kinetic quantities, is known to be one of the major way to gain a deeper insight of how the running gesture is performed by athletes. On one hand, the study of the specific gesture of an athlete can be used to enhance the performance. On the other hand, it can be used to drastically reduce the injury risk of the athlete. One of the main way to go deeper into the running gesture is to use a musculoskeletal model approach. In that way, from kinematic and kinetic quantities it is possible to estimate not only joint angles and moments, but also muscle activations and joint reactions. The data collection has been performed at the Palaindoor of Padua with the use of specific instrumentation like Motion Capture cameras, force platforms and electromyography sensors. At first, raw data have been processed with Vicon Nexus and MATLAB software in order to track marker’s trajectories and extract good quality data. Thus, OpenSim software has been used to perform the simulations. By using experimental processed data and multiple OpenSim parameters, the software allowed estimating joint angles, moments and powers and muscle activations. Hence, joint angles, angular velocities and moments have been compared with kinematic and kinetic quantities estimated with OLYMPIA UNIPD software, another biomechanical analysis tool. Muscle activations have been compared with processed EMG signals and with literature. The results showed agreements both with literature and with OLYMPIA UNIPD software and confirmed the advanced potentialities provided by musculoskeletal models in the sport field.