Surface hardness effects on biomechanics foot response during running

Abstract

Running activities can be either beneficial or caused chronic injuries among runners. Surface hardness and shod condition can be considered as the major factors that influenced the running performance. Understanding the biomechanics affected by running surface and shod conditions might prevent injury and enhance the benefits of running activity. This thesis discuss the experimental analysis on the effect of surface hardness and shod condition on the biomechanical foot responses. The parameters were investigated experimentally during the stance phase of ten male subjects that running with three different shod conditions; barefoot (BF), heeled running shoe (HS), and minimally running shoe (MS) on three types of running surface with different hardness level (i.e. concrete, artificial grass and rubber). Screening process was conducted by evaluating the foot strike pattern among the subjects in order to eliminate the influence of foot strike on biomechanics responses. Only heel strikers’ data was analyzed since most of the subjects performed heel strike during the experiment. The significant difference on kinematic parameter was found in investigation of joint rotation during mid-stance of stance in BF running, although the pattern of joint rotations on all surfaces in each shod condition is almost similar in overall stance phase. The significant difference was also found in the temporal parameter during HS and MS running and the stance time was found to have a strong correlation relationship with surface hardness. However, kinetic parameters show poor correlation relationship with running surface for both GRF and PFS as the results are varied as the surface hardness was changed. This study could provide additional insight on relationships between kinematic and kinetic parameters in addition to temporal parameters when running on different surface hardness.