As a demanding motor act, running activates considerably the musculoskeletal, cardiovascular and pulmonary apparatus both in subjects with a low degree of training, and in semi-professional and professional athletes. It consists in a set of motor patterns that are repeated all the time during the entire covered distance. In particular for an athlete, it is essential to monitor and verify the correctness of the gesture and optimize the performance.

The greater the distance traveled, the greater the importance of this type of analysis. IUTA is the Italian Ultramarathon and Trail Association that, among others, gathers the ultramarathon runners engaged in the 24-hour race, where the goal is to reach the longest distance possible. These athletes, in addition to the race, are subjected to long training sessions in which they frequently travel a great distance. Among other things, this type of routine can lead to ankle instability.

Because of that, it is important to frequently check the running gesture to avoid injuries due to the repetition of incorrect attitudes. To achieve this, the athletes have been evaluated with medical techniques and research methods in a health facility that takes care of the association's athletes. In particular, data have been acquired by means of a baropodometric plate, a motion capture technique and an in-house developed modular force plates system. Thus, the data obtained by the different techniques have been integrated to broaden the analysis of the athletes’ performances.

The baropodometric plate enables to obtain the pressure data from the sole of the feet both in static and dynamic acquisition and can be used to verify the correctness of the gait parameters. The motion capture system (Mo-Cap) acquires the 3D position of a specific marker-set on the body of the subject and report the XYZ coordinates of the points as well as certain angles between the markers. The force plate system is used to acquire the Vertical Ground Reaction Forces (vGRF) during several static poses and to evaluate data from tests with athletes performing asked gestures.

The experimental campaign has been carried out on six IUTA athletes, two males and four females. The athletes have been informed and have given their consent. During the campaign several tests have been made starting with static and dynamic acquisitions on the baropodometric plate. The acquisitions include a static test in bipodal support, a dynamic acquisition of walking gesture and two acquisitions of the left and right foot in single support. The Mo-Cap has been used to acquire a set of movements previously defined with the medical staff: a squat, a walking session and ten seconds of left and right single support. The force plate system has been exploited to evaluate the equilibrium during static and squat acquisitions with the same feet position.

Finally, the data have been analyzed and compared to each other. The results and their discussion have been then delivered to the medical staff in order to evaluate the ankle stability and several other parameters and define the biomechanical and medical athlete’s condition. These considerations are reported in the conclusions.


Biomechanical Analyses of Professional Ultramarathon Athletes: The Effect of Repeated Long Distances on the Gait Kinematic and Kinetics

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Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IMECE/IMECE2020/volume/84478

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