Arm Movement and Running Speed: Is the Partnership Overrated?
upstart writes:
Arm movement and running speed: Is the partnership overrated?:
The findings, published in the journal Gait & Posture, offer additional fundamental insights regarding limb synchronization during sprint performance.
"Our findings suggest the classic view that arm swing directly drives leg motion to affect performance is not well-supported," said Peter Weyand, an expert in human speed who leads SMU's Locomotor Performance Lab.
[...] The study examined the velocity of participants first sprinting 30 meters with regular arm motion, then again with restricted arm motion. When study participants sprinted with restricted arm motion, their 30-meter sprint time slowed down by only 0.08 seconds on average, a 1.6 percent difference from when the participants sprinted while moving their arms.
"We were surprised by the small magnitude of difference between the two experimental conditions. It is generally believed that the arms substantially influence the movement of the legs, and therefore running speed, which clearly is not the case," Brooks said.
[...] "The compensatory torso twisting movements we observed during arm motion restriction indicate that runners swing their arms as the simplest and most natural strategy to prevent undesirable bodily rotations," Clark said.
[...] "Virtually all runners choose to swing their arms to maintain a forward-facing position," Weyand said. "The classic studies on the 'why' of arm motion during human locomotion are 40 or more years old and focused primarily on walking and jogging. So, performance effects were largely unknown," he said.
Journal Reference:
Lance C.Brooks, Peter G.Weyand, and Kenneth P.Clark, Does restricting arm motion compromise short sprint running performance?, Gait & Posture, 94, 2022
DOI: 10.1016/j.gaitpost.2022.03.001
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