The below GIF isn’t your typical animation, although if it were, it certainly would be a pretty neat one.
Instead these are images from a data-driven 3-D robotic model of someone running.
The data that are fed into this robotic model come from 3-D motion measurements of joint and limb segment motions that are taken simultaneously with ground reaction force measurements. My research team and I helped pioneer this type of integrative analysis, which we used to study a variety of movements, including walking and running. As we were the first to do this complete, in-depth analysis, we made many discoveries about the natural muscle and joint mechanics of walking and running, and the effects of different types of footwear, resulting in numerous peer-reviewed research publications, as well as in the birth of OESH.
To do a study, typically it would take pouring through oodles of graphs and plots of things like pressures through the knee joint. But when all was said and published, I’d use a handy-dandy robot like this one to explain.
The size of the green arrowed line represents the magnitude and direction of the ground reaction force (which is equal and opposite to what the body imparts to the ground). The red lines are the muscles.
If you study the video, you can appreciate that at the moment of “impact,” when the foot makes its first contact with the ground, the green arrowed line is small. Only later when the foot is fully planted, when most of the weight is on the forefoot, is the force imparted to the ground at its maximum. Similarly, the forces through the joints, muscles, tendons, fascia, and ligaments are at their maximum not at impact but later, when the foot is fully planted. It has long been assumed that the greatest forces occur at impact and shoes have been designed around that assumption. OESH, are the only shoes designed to respond when forces through the joints, muscles, tendons, fascia, and ligaments are at their maximum.
We just uploaded these images to our OESH Concept Page as well as to our OESH Research Page. Stay tuned to those pages as we will shortly launch a similar image of someone walking.
Enjoy!
