Gender and age-group differences in hip muscle activity patterns in elite race walkers

Abstract

Race walking is a complex activity that relies on considerable power
generation by the muscles at the hip joint. Little is known, however,
whether differences are present in terms of muscle activity patterns
between men and women, or between younger and older athletes.
The purpose of this study was to compare hip muscle activity
patterns in elite male and female race walkers across U20 and
senior age groups. Ten male and ten female race walkers
participated, with five U20 and five senior athletes of each gender.
The athletes were recorded using high-speed videography (100 Hz)
as they race walked down a 40 m runway, during which the muscle
activity of the gluteus medius, gluteus maximus, biceps femoris and
rectus femoris was recorded using electromyography (EMG) (1000
Hz). The hip sagittal angle was calculated from digitised data, and
average rectified EMG used to identify visual differences between
groups. No differences were found using ANOVA between any
groups for the activity of any of the four muscles analysed at toe-off,
midswing, heel-strike and midstance, although there were visual
differences in activity timings. Overall the few differences between
groups showed that race walking techniques are comparable across
trained athletes and coaches can adopt similar training practices
when developing the muscular qualities of their athletes.