Familiarization to treadmill running in young unimpaired adults
Introduction
Treadmills offer many distinct advantages. Speed, slope and environmental factors can be easily controlled and data from repeated running cycles can be collected. Treadmills have therefore been used in many experimental studies investigating human locomotion (Baitch et al., 1991, Nawoczenski et al., 1995, Nigg et al., 2003, Williams and Cavanagh, 1987) and have been applied in clinical practice for purposes of assessment and/or retraining (Baker et al., 1991, Hesse and Werner, 2003). Ultimately, in order for the treadmill to be accepted as a useful research and/or clinical instrument, it must be demonstrated that it does not alter the natural performance of the evaluated task. It is on this basis that concerns are raised regarding the applicability of findings from treadmill running, as biomechanical differences between overground and treadmill running have been reported in numerous studies (Elliott and Blanksby, 1976, Frishberg, 1983, Nelson et al., 1972, Nigg et al., 1995, Wank et al., 1998).
There are many possible factors that may explain observed differences in overground and treadmill running. These include both mechanical factors, such as inherent differences in surface stiffness between the two conditions and the presence of intra-stride belt speed variations during treadmill running, as well as non-mechanical factors, such as treadmill familiarization. Several studies have focussed on the effects of intra-stride belt speed variations (Savelberg et al., 1998, Schamhardt et al., 1994) and changes in running surface stiffness (Dixon et al., 2000, Ferris et al., 1998). However, little attention to date has been placed on the process of familiarizing to treadmill running.
Running on a treadmill is initially an unfamiliar experience, largely due to the visual contrast in the surrounding environment. Familiarization may be defined as the process whereby differences in repeated measurements of a specific parameter stabilise to an acceptable (i.e. non-significant) level within a session (Matsas et al., 2000, White et al., 2002). Several studies have formally investigated the process of familiarization to treadmill running for unimpaired adults (Cavanagh and Williams, 1982, Schieb, 1986, White et al., 2002). Mixed findings have so far been reported thus there is currently no general consensus amongst investigators as to when familiarization occurs. Furthermore, these cited studies have only considered general measures such as spatio-temporal parameters, centre of mass displacement and ground reaction force data. It is difficult to know whether findings can be extrapolated to circumstances where three-dimensional (3D) angular kinematic parameters are of interest. Biomechanical studies of human locomotion commonly utilize 3D angular kinematic parameters as primary outcome measures. To provide additional information regarding the process of familiarization to treadmill running, it was therefore considered important to further explore this issue with regard to 3D pelvis and lower limb angular kinematics.
The aim of the current experiment was to investigate the amount of time required for young unimpaired adults to familiarize to treadmill running. To determine this, 3D sagittal-plane pelvis and lower limb angular kinematics as well as cadence and stride time were measured. It was hypothesized that young unimpaired adults are capable of familiarizing to treadmill running within one treadmill training session of 11 min.
Section snippets
Participants
Seventeen adults (8 males; 9 females) were voluntarily recruited as a sample of convenience. Participants had a mean height of 169.2 (SD = 7.9) cm, body mass of 71.3 (SD = 16.0) kg and age of 22.4 (SD = 3.1) years. None of the participants were suffering from any musculoskeletal pathology or illness that would have influenced their ability to run. As previous exposure to the treadmill may affect familiarization, participants with little (<5 min) or no prior experience with treadmill walking or running
Qualitative
Sixteen of the 17 participants ran on the treadmill without hand support within 4 min; of these 16 participants, 15 were running without hand support within 30 s. One participant kept both hands on the handrails for the duration of the treadmill trial. Two participants did not run for 11 min as the makers detached from their skin. For these two participants, data were captured at 0 and 2 min of treadmill jogging only and were therefore only used for the qualitative analyses.
Changes across time
There were significant
Discussion
Young, healthy adults familiarized to treadmill running after 6 min. Therefore, the hypothesis that young healthy adults could familiarize to treadmill running within a single session of 11 min training is supported. There were no significant differences in any dependent variables or absolute difference scores after 6 min of treadmill running. Absolute mean differences scores between successive times for average angles of the pelvis, hip, knee and ankle were at a minimum between 6 and 10 min
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