ArticleThe Journal of experimental biology2014
The energetic benefits of tendon springs in running: is the reduction of muscle work important?
Article in The Journal of experimental biology, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT04033146 (Optimizing Ankle Exoskeleton Assistance for Walking Across the Life Span), which is not on this map. Cited by 29 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Optimizing Ankle Exoskeleton Assistance for Walking Across the Life Span
Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Acute and Chronic Effects of Stretching on Running Economy: A Systematic Review with Meta-Analysis.Sports medicine - open · 2025Pooled it
- Exploring Factors to Explain Interindividual Responses to Running Economy in Advanced Footwear Technology Shoes: A Randomised Crossover Laboratory Trial with an Explanatory Predictor Analysis.Sports medicine - open · 2026Article
- Running Economy Benefits of Shoes Incorporating Advanced Footwear Technology Decrease With Increasing Incline and Are Negligible Above Moderate Gradients.Scandinavian journal of medicine & science in sports · 2026Article
- A new conceptual framework for managing hamstring injury risk in soccer - implementing a data-informed approach: a narrative review.Biology of sport · 2026Review
- Consecutive SSCs increase the SSC effect in skinned rat muscle fibres.Pflugers Archiv : European journal of physiology · 2025Article
- Utilizing Rhythmic Haptic Cueing in Arm Swing Training to Improve Gait Speed Among Older Adults.Annals of biomedical engineering · 2025Article
- The importance of muscle activation on the interpretation of muscle mechanical performance.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
- The effect of forward postural lean on running economy, kinematics, and muscle activation.PloS one · 2024Article
- A Conceptual Exploration of Hamstring Muscle-Tendon Functioning during the Late-Swing Phase of Sprinting: The Importance of Evidence-Based Hamstring Training Frameworks.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2023Review
- Muscle-tendon unit design and tuning for power enhancement, power attenuation, and reduction of metabolic cost.Journal of biomechanics · 2023Review
- The interplay between gastrocnemius medialis force-length and force-velocity potentials, cumulative EMG activity and energy cost at speeds above and below the walk to run transition speed.Experimental physiology · 2023Article
- Legs as linkages: an alternative paradigm for the role of tendons and isometric muscles in facilitating economical gait.The Journal of experimental biology · 2022Article
- Deceleration Training in Team Sports: Another Potential 'Vaccine' for Sports-Related Injury?Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2022Article
- Energetics and Biomechanics of Running Footwear with Increased Longitudinal Bending Stiffness: A Narrative Review.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2021Review
- Power Amplification Increases With Contraction Velocity During Stretch-Shortening Cycles of Skinned Muscle Fibers.Frontiers in physiology · 2021Article
- Triceps Surae Muscle-Tendon Properties as Determinants of the Metabolic Cost in Trained Long-Distance Runners.Frontiers in physiology · 2021Article
- Cyclically producing the same average muscle-tendon force with a smaller duty increases metabolic rate.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Impact of elastic ankle exoskeleton stiffness on neuromechanics and energetics of human walking across multiple speeds.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation · 2020Article
- Article
- Some Challenges of Playing with Power: Does Complex Energy Flow Constrain Neuromuscular Performance?Integrative and comparative biology · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The distal muscle-tendon units of cursorial species are commonly composed of short muscle fibres and long, compliant tendons. It is assumed that the ability of these tendons to store and return mechanical energy over the course of a stride, thus avoiding the cyclic absorption and regeneration of mechanical energy by active muscle, offers some metabolic energy savings during running. However, this assumption has not been tested directly. We used muscle ergometry and myothermic measurements to determine the cost of force production in muscles acting isometrically, as they could if mechanical energy was stored and returned by tendon, and undergoing active stretch-shorten cycles, as they would if mechanical energy was absorbed and regenerated by muscle. We found no detectable difference in the cost of force production in isometric cycles compared with stretch-shorten cycles. This result suggests that replacing muscle stretch-shorten work with tendon elastic energy storage and recovery does not reduce the cost of force production. This calls into question the assumption that reduction of muscle work drove the evolution of long distal tendons. We propose that the energetic benefits of tendons are derived primarily from their effect on muscle and limb architecture rather than their ability to reduce the cyclic work of muscle.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.