You're not crazy, it is harder to walk along the beach

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-11-30 11:01

International

Why does a walk along the beach leave you breathless? Researchers compared how muscles work on foam or solid floors by measuring participants’ movement, forces under their feet and oxygen consumption while walking on either surface. They found walking on compliant terrain (e.g sand, mud and snow) leads to longer strides and larger motions in the hip and knee. This causes greater energy consumption by the muscles spanning those joints and might leave you a little more tired than if you were walking on solid ground.

News release

From: The Royal Society

Why does the metabolic cost of walking increase on compliant substrates?
Journal of the Royal Society Interface

Summary: We use more energy when walking on compliant–deforming - substrates. To know why, we asked people to walk on foams and a solid floor. We measured their motions, the forces under their feet, and how much oxygen they consumed. We entered these data into a computer model simulating a human walking on these substrates. This allowed us to see how muscles work differently on different substrates. The results show that walking on compliant terrain leads to longer strides and larger motions in the hip and knee, which leads to greater energy consumption by the muscles spanning those joints.

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Journal/
conference: Journal of the Royal Society Interface

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: University of Liverpool, UK

Funder: This study was funded by grants from the Leverhulme Trust (grant no. RPG-2017-296) and by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and Versus Arthritis as part of the Medical Research Council Versus Arthritis Centre for Integrated Research into Musculoskeletal Ageing (CIMA) [grant no. MR/P020941/1]. The MRCVersus Arthritis Centre for Integrated Research intoMusculoskeletal Ageing is a collaboration between the Universities of Liverpool, Sheffield and Newcastle.

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