A BIOMECHANICAL STUDY ON “MASTER’S RACE WALKING”: FOCUSING ON BENT KNEE REGULATION

Abstract

The master’s sport became popular including race walking. In master’s athletes, especially elderly of more than 70 or 80 years of age, feels difficulty to keep the rule of “Bent Knee”. The present study demonstrated the difficulty of keeping the rule of “Bent Knee” using the elderly race walker of 82 years of age and younger one. The experiment in laboratory test showed that the race walking course should be carefully checked the flatness because it is hard to walk the slope course more than 5 degrees even in case of normal walk both in young and elderly walk racer. It should be paid more care for elderly race walker for their safety and the more developing the number of elderly race walker. The rule of race walking relating the Bent Knee should be considered independently from the present rule for the benefit of the master’s race walker.