Musculoskeletal Equilibrium, Posture
Conditions
Brief summary
Postural alignment is often intervened upon in health, fitness, and physical medicine settings. Despite a long tradition in this area, current notions of optimal or normal posture are superficial and often logically inconsistent. A recent attempt to reconcile diverging opinions about good posture proposes that alignment be considered in relation to individual joints' natural tendencies to collapse under gravity. This theory allows different maladaptive postures to be described in terms of functional deficits and compensatory adaptations at the muscular level. Working within this type of theory, postural interventions may be able to account for comparative advantages in maintaining alignment between different muscle systems. This would represent a step forward from current practices, which usually attempt to force arbitrary alignment patterns indiscriminately. The current study presents motion capture and electromyography (EMG) data evaluating the effects of two interventions on individual participants' bipedal standing alignment patterns with respect to the gravitational collapsing tendencies referenced above. Additional outcomes included functional grouping of muscle activation signals (via intermuscular coherence) and kinetic chain continuity. The interventions include 1) an experimental intervention purported to engage muscles that naturally resist the collapsing effects of gravity, and 2) a control intervention designed to inhibit other muscle groups that are sometimes involved in maintaining bipedal alignment in a compensatory role. Study outcomes are measured before and after both interventions to quantify the acute effects of each. All participants complete both interventions in random order, crossing over after a one-week washout period. This research will provide insight into the acute effects of studied interventions, specifically those relating to maintenance of bipedal alignment with respect to gravitational collapsing tendencies.
Interventions
OTHERExercise Then Foam Roll
Participants in AB will perform the experimental (exercise) intervention first and the control (foam rolling) intervention second.
OTHERFoam Roll Then Exercise
Participants in BA will perform the control (foam rolling) intervention first and the experimental (exercise) intervention second.
Sponsors
Radford University
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
CROSSOVER
Primary purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
NONE
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to 40 Years
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
* Healthy adult * 18 - 40 years of age
Exclusion criteria
* Recent (\< 6 months) history of lower extremity injury * Recent (\< 6 months) history of other musculoskeletal or neurological disorder affecting balance * Contraindications to participation in physical activity
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Euclidean distance from the vector describing subject-specific, simulated gravitational collapse | Immediately before Intervention (Day 1) | This outcome is a cumulative descriptor of segment angle distance from the pattern in which an individual's posture would collapse. The reference point for each individual is calculated using both pre and post-intervention data for a given day. |
| Pooled intermuscular coherence | Immediately before Intervention (Day 1) | Weighted average of frequency-domain correlations between muscle pairs belonging to anterior, posterior, and trunk muscle groups. |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Top-down kinetic chain continuity | Immediately before Intervention (Day 1) | The purpose of this outcome is to quantify the communication of motion from the upper body to the lower body. In a test involving placing hands-on-head and pulling the elbows back as far as possible, the response in the lower body is quantified by posterior rotation of the tibial segment. |
Countries
United States
Outcome results
None listed