New Insights Optimize Landing Strategies to Reduce Lower Limb Injury Risk

Datao Xu, Huiyu Zhou, Wenjing Quan, Xin Ma, Teo Ee Chon, Justin Fernandez, Fekete Gusztav, András Kovács, Julien S. Baker, Yaodong Gu*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

    7 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Single-leg landing (SL) is often associated with a high injury risk, especially anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries and lateral ankle sprain. This work investigates the relationship between ankle motion patterns (ankle initial contact angle [AICA] and ankle range of motion [AROM]) and the lower limb injury risk during SL, and proposes an optimized landing strategy that can reduce the injury risk. To more realistically revert and simulate the ACL injury mechanics, we developed a knee musculoskeletal model that reverts the ACL ligament to a nonlinear short-term viscoelastic mechanical mechanism (strain ratedependent) generated by the dense connective tissue as a function of strain. Sixty healthy male subjects were recruited to collect biomechanics data during SL. The correlation analysis was conducted to explore the relationship between AICA, AROM, and peak vertical ground reaction force (PVGRF), joint total energy dissipation (TED), peak ankle knee hip sagittal moment, peak ankle inversion angle (PAIA), and peak ACL force (PAF). AICA exhibits a negative correlation with PVGRF (r = -0.591) and PAF (r = -0.554), and a positive correlation with TED (r = 0.490) and PAIA (r = 0.502). AROM exhibits a positive correlation with TED (r = 0.687) and PAIA (r = 0.600). The results suggested that the appropriate increases in AICA (30° to 40°) and AROM (50° to 70°) may reduce the lower limb injury risk. This study has the potential to offer novel perspectives on the optimized application of landing strategies, thus giving the crucial theoretical basis for decreasing injury risk.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number0126
    Number of pages15
    JournalCyborg and Bionic Systems
    Volume5
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Jan 2024

    Scopus Subject Areas

    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Human-Computer Interaction
    • Biomedical Engineering
    • Mechanical Engineering

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