ArticleThe Journal of experimental biology2015
Children and adults minimise activated muscle volume by selecting gait parameters that balance gross mechanical power and work demands.
Article in The Journal of experimental biology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed.
- Leg compliance is required to explain the ground reaction force patterns and speed ranges in different gaits.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Why does the metabolic cost of walking increase on compliant substrates?Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Article
- Natural history of 10-meter walk/run test performance in spinal muscular atrophy: A longitudinal analysis.Neuromuscular disorders : NMD · 2022Article
- Competing Models of Work in Quadrupedal Walking: Center of Mass Work is Insufficient to Explain Stereotypical Gait.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2022Article
- A unified energy-optimality criterion predicts human navigation paths and speeds.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- The contractile patterns, anatomy and physiology of the hyoid musculature change longitudinally through infancy.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Emergence of Different Gaits in Infancy: Relationship Between Developing Neural Circuitries and Changing Biomechanics.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2020Review
- An inelastic quadrupedal model discovers four-beat walking, two-beat running, and pseudo-elastic actuation as energetically optimal.PLoS computational biology · 2019Article
- An instrumented centrifuge for studying mouse locomotion and behaviour under hypergravity.Biology open · 2019Article
- Spring-loaded inverted pendulum goes through two contraction-extension cycles during the single-support phase of walking.Biology open · 2019Article
- The Landscape of Movement Control in Locomotion: Cost, Strategy, and Solution.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Review
- The scaling or ontogeny of human gait kinetics and walk-run transition: The implications of work vs. peak power minimization.Journal of biomechanics · 2018Article
- The influence of speed and size on avian terrestrial locomotor biomechanics: Predicting locomotion in extinct theropod dinosaurs.PloS one · 2018Article
- Article
- Measuring the Energy of Ventilation and Circulation during Human Walking using Induced Hypoxia.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- The muscle-mechanical compromise framework: Implications for the scaling of gait and posture.Journal of human kinetics · 2016Article
- A unified theory for the energy cost of legged locomotion.Biology letters · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Terrestrial locomotion on legs is energetically expensive. Compared with cycling, or with locomotion in swimming or flying animals, walking and running are highly uneconomical. Legged gaits that minimise mechanical work have previously been identified and broadly match walking and running at appropriate speeds. Furthermore, the 'cost of muscle force' approaches are effective in relating locomotion kinetics to metabolic cost. However, few accounts have been made for why animals deviate from either work-minimising or muscle-force-minimising strategies. Also, there is no current mechanistic account for the scaling of locomotion kinetics with animal size and speed. Here, we report measurements of ground reaction forces in walking children and adult humans, and their stance durations during running. We find that many aspects of gait kinetics and kinematics scale with speed and size in a manner that is consistent with minimising muscle activation required for the more demanding between mechanical work and power: spreading the duration of muscle action reduces activation requirements for power, at the cost of greater work demands. Mechanical work is relatively more demanding for larger bipeds--adult humans--accounting for their symmetrical M-shaped vertical force traces in walking, and relatively brief stance durations in running compared with smaller bipeds--children. The gaits of small children, and the greater deviation of their mechanics from work-minimising strategies, may be understood as appropriate for their scale, not merely as immature, incompletely developed and energetically sub-optimal versions of adult gaits.
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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.