Abigail Steele
Abby Steele is a junior majoring in Exercise Science and minoring in Medical Sciences and Psychology. She has been a research assistant in Dr. Allison Gruber’s lab for almost a year and has had the opportunity to work on projects dealing with analyzing gait in runners of different ages and experience levels. Over the summer, she will be applying to graduate schools for physical therapy. Outside of classes, she is involved in Alpha Phi Omega, which is a co-ed service fraternity that focuses on community service and leadership development.
RELATIONSHIP OF SEX AND RUNNING EXPERIENCE TO INJURY-RELATED BIOMECHANICS
Abigail Steele, Gauri A. Desai, Dr. Allison H. Gruber
Introduction: Biomechanics and running related injury (RRI) rates vary between runner sub-populations. Novice and female runners have a higher RRI risk compared with their counterparts, which may relate to different running mechanics. For example, novice runners exhibit less peak frontal plane ankle angles and female runners display greater frontal and sagittal plane peak hip angles.
Purpose: To assess the combined effects of sex and running experience on previously reported RRI biomechanics.
Methods: Eight female and 10 male runners volunteered (Novice group: females=4; males=5; running 3-13 mi/wk for <2-years. Recreational group: females=4; male=5; running 9-30 mi/wk for ≥2-years). Frontal plane hip, knee, and foot, and sagittal and transverse plane knee joint angles from the stance phase were calculated from 3D motion capture data. Two-way ANOVA assessed the differences in peak joint angles between sex and running experience groups.
Results: Significant main effects of running experience and sex were observed for peak knee flexion and peak foot internal rotation with large effects sizes (partial η2≥0.14). Novice runners had greater peak knee flexion (40.36o±3.16o) during stance than recreational runners (37.34o±2.73o) (p=0.047, partial η2=0.25). Female runners had greater peak foot internal rotation (3.70o±4.74o) than males (9.40o±4.63o) (p=0.025, partial η2=0.31).
Conclusions: Main effects of sex and running experience on running gait mechanics were confirmed in this preliminary sample. The lack of evidence between peak knee flexion, peak foot adduction, and prospective RRI risk from the literature suggests that the differences in running gait mechanics observed in our sample may not explain the different rates of RRI between sex or experience subpopulations of runners.
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