ArticleJournal of the Royal Society, Interface2022
Why does the metabolic cost of walking increase on compliant substrates?
Article in Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- Habitat selection during dispersal reduces the energetic cost of transport when making large displacements.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- The effects of kinesiology taping on joint stability during descending stairs in patients with acute ankle injuries.BMC sports science, medicine & rehabilitation · 2025Article
- Exploring the accuracy of palaeobiological modelling procedures in forward-dynamics simulations of maximum-effort vertical jumping.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- The fitness costs and benefits of hunter-gatherer locomotor engagement.Evolutionary human sciences · 2025Article
- Human walking biomechanics on sand substrates of varying foot sinking depth.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
- Testing the form-function paradigm: body shape correlates with kinematics but not energetics in selectively-bred birds.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Article
- Three-dimensional volumetric muscle reconstruction of theRoyal Society open science · 2023Article
- Why does the metabolic cost of walking increase on compliant substrates?Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Walking on compliant substrates requires more energy than walking on hard substrates but the biomechanical factors that contribute to this increase are debated. Previous studies suggest various causative mechanical factors, including disruption to pendular energy recovery, increased muscle work, decreased muscle efficiency and increased gait variability. We test each of these hypotheses simultaneously by collecting a large kinematic and kinetic dataset of human walking on foams of differing thickness. This allowed us to systematically characterize changes in gait with substrate compliance, and, by combining data with mechanical substrate testing, drive the very first subject-specific computer simulations of human locomotion on compliant substrates to estimate the internal kinetic demands on the musculoskeletal system. Negative changes to pendular energy exchange or ankle mechanics are not supported by our analyses. Instead we find that the mechanistic causes of increased energetic costs on compliant substrates are more complex than captured by any single previous hypothesis. We present a model in which elevated activity and mechanical work by muscles crossing the hip and knee are required to support the changes in joint (greater excursion and maximum flexion) and spatio-temporal kinematics (longer stride lengths, stride times and stance times, and duty factors) on compliant substrates.
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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.