The Role of Extrinsic Foot Muscles During Running

Running overuse injuries are typically associated with excessive pronation of the foot during stance. Excessive pronation may impose stress on the extrinsic muscles of the foot leading to injury. Therefore, the purpose of these studies were to examine the roles of these muscles when an external perturbation was employed in the form of varus, neutral, and valgus-wedged shoes. It was hypothesized that running in the valgus shoes would increase eversion (approximating pronation), the net inversion joint moment, activation of the invertor muscles, and the force in these muscles.

The first experiment was designed to investigate the kinematic and kinetic responses to running at 3.6 m/s in the varus, neutral, and valgus shoes. This study also reported the EMG profiles of these muscles. The valgus shoes increased maximum eversion and the peak inversion joint moment. The calculation of joint work also demonstrated that there was greater energy absorption in the frontal plane while running in the valgus shoes. This indirectly suggests that the muscles involved in controlling pronation of the foot absorbed more energy when eversion increased, which could be related to injury potential. No significant differences were observed for EMG. Therefore, the increased joint moment may be due to passive mechanisms.

The second experiment further investigated the activation of the extrinsic foot muscles using both EMG and functional fMRJ during treadmill running. Generally, the activations patterns did not agree with the hypothesis that increased pronation would lead to increased muscle activity.

The third study compared joint moments calculated in the frontal plane with joint moments calculated about an estimate of the subtalar joint. This study demonstrated that frontal plane kinetics might give an inaccurate portrayal of the muscular contributions to controlling foot motion.

The fourth study developed a musculoskeletal model to estimate the force in each of the extrinsic foot muscles. The model established that the soleus was a substantial contributor to inversion of the foot, along with the tibialis posterior. Also, the valgus shoe increased energy absorption in the soleus tendon. These data may establish a direct link between “excessive" pronation and injuries such as medial tibial stress syndrome.

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Year

Entry

2001

Anderson FC, Pandy MG. Static and dynamic optimization solutions for gait are practically equivalent. J Biomech. February 2001;34(2):153-161.

1987

Nigg BM, Morlock M. The influence of lateral heel flare of running shoes on pronation and impact forces. Med Sci Sports Exer. June 1987;19(3):294-302.

1983

Grood ES, Suntay WJ. A joint coordinate system for the clinical description of three-dimensional motions: application to the knee. J Biomech Eng. May 1983;105(2):136-144.

2000

Hreljac A, Marshall RN, Hume PA. Evaluation of lower extremity overuse injury potential in runners. Med Sci Sports Exer. September 2000;32(9):1635-1641.

2000

Neptune RR, Wright IC, van den Bogert AJ. A method for numerical simulation of single limb ground contact events: application to heel-toe running. Comput Methods Biomech Biomed Eng. 2000;3(4):321-334.