Influences of gait retraining on joint coordination and variability among runners with PFP

What is it about?

In our study, Twenty male runners with PFP performed six running strategies which were two strike patterns named forefoot (FFS) and rearfoot (RFS) accompanied by three running cadences named slow10%, normal, and fast10%. A modified vector coding technique and circular statistics were respectively used to identify the coordination pattern and variability between hip sagittal-knee frontal (HsKf), hip sagittal-knee sagittal (HsKs) and knee transverse-ankle frontal (KtAf) during stance phase. Coordination patterns which were conformed with anatomical motion pattern was classified as mechanically sound, and the distribution frequency of each coordination pattern was quantified. Our findings suggest that immediately changing the running cadence (± 10%) and transferring strike pattern from RFS to FFS did not change the distribution frequency in mechanically sound coordination patterns and did not affect the coordination variability of runners with PFP. RFS exhibited more hip- and ankle-dominated mechanically sound coordination patterns when changing the running cadence in a short-term, which may be a protective strategyfor natural RFS runners with PFP.

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Photo by sporlab on Unsplash

Photo by sporlab on Unsplash

Why is it important?

RFS runners with PFP exhibited more hip- and ankle-dominated mechanically sound coordination patterns when changing the running cadence in a short-term, which may be a protective strategy for natural RFS runners with PFP.

Perspectives