ORIGINAL ARTICLE   

Gazzetta Medica Italiana - Archivio per le Scienze Mediche 2020 January-February;179(1-2):29-38

DOI: 10.23736/S0393-3660.18.04009-3

Copyright © 2018 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

lingua: Inglese

A three-dimensional kinematic analysis of walking speed on world elite women’s 20-km walking races using an inverted pendulum model

Koji HOGA-MIURA ¹ ✉, Ryotaro HIROKAWA ², Masaaki SUGITA ³, Yasushi ENOMOTO ⁴, Hirosuke KADONO ⁵, Yuta SUZUKI ⁶

¹ Japan High Performance Sport Center, National Agency of Japan Sports Council, Tokyo, Japan; ² Department of Community Development, School of International Cultural Relations, Tokai University, Sapporo, Japan; ³ Department of Physical Education, Faculty of Sport Science, Nippon Sport Science University, Tokyo, Japan; ⁴ Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan; ⁵ Department of Sports Science, Sendai University, Miyagi, Japan; ⁶ Research Center for Urban Health and Sports, Osaka City University, Osaka, Japan

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to investigate mechanical factors to obtain large walking speed on world elite women’s 20-km walking race.
METHODS: Thirty-four female race-walkers at two official women’s 20-km walking races (World Championships in Athletics held in 2005 and 2007) were analyzed using three-dimensional direct linear transformation (DLT). The subjects who finished below entry standards (1:36:00) were analyzed in this present study. For athletes who walked both competitions, the better performance of each athlete was selected for the analysis.
RESULTS: The support time of one step strongly correlated with walking speed and the race performance. The acceleration of the center of gravity relative to the center of pressure correlated with the walking speed and the support time. The large acceleration of the center of gravity relative to the support foot might be generated by the acceleration of the support thigh, the lower torso and the recovery thigh in the middle of the support phase.
CONCLUSIONS: These accelerations may come from the large angular acceleration of the pendulum in the frontal plane in a direction to recover from the oblique position to the vertical position in the middle of the support phase. The large knee valgus torque may help to obtain this angular acceleration of the pendulum in the frontal plane.

KEY WORDS: Race walking; Support leg; Inverted pendulum; Knee valgus torque