Der Artikel "Leg stiffness: Comparison between unilateral and bilateral hopping tasks" von den Autoren Torsten Brauner, Thorsten Sterzing, Mathias Wulf und Thomas Horstmann, wurde im Journal Human Movement Science veröffentlicht.
Abstract:
Leg stiffness is a predictor of athletic performance and injury and typically evaluated during bilateral hopping. The contribution of each limb to bilateral leg stiffness, however, is not well understood. This study investigated leg stiffness during unilateral and bilateral hopping to address the following research questions: (1) does themagnitude and variability of leg stiffness differ between dominantand non-dominant legs? (2) Does unilateral leg stiffness differ frombilateral leg stiffness? and (3) Is bilateral leg stiffness determined by unilateral leg stiffness? Thirtytwo physically active males per-formed repeated hopping tests on a force platform for each of the three conditions: bilateral hopping, unilateral hopping on the dominant leg, and unilateral hopping on the non-dominant leg. Legstiffness was estimated as the ratio of the peak vertical force andthe maximum displacement using a simple 1-D mass-springmodel. Neither the magnitude nor variability of leg stiffness differed between dominant and non-dominant limbs. Unilateral legstiffness was 24% lower than bilateral stiffness and showed lessvariability between consecutive hops and subjects. Unilateral legstiffness explained 76% of the variance in bilateral leg stiffness. We conclude that leg stiffness estimates during unilateral hoppingare preferable for intervention studies because of their low variability.