A WAVELET-BASED ANALYSIS OF GENDER DEPENDENT EMG PATTERNS WITHIN DIFFERENT TESTING CONDITIONS IN RUNNING

Abstract

It has been found that women and men demonstrate different running mechanics (Ferber et al., 2003). To investigate running mechanics, different testing conditions (e.g. treadmill / overground running) are used in laboratory. EMG-signals and kinematics are considered to be different between overground and treadmill running, while the influence of gender on altered kinematics or EMG-signals remains unclear (Nigg et al., 1994; Wank et al., 1998). Therefore the purpose of this study was to get information about muscle activity and kinematics of female and male runners while running in different testing conditions in order to examine a) if there are gender dependent differences in muscle activation or kinematics and b) if the muscular / kinematical response to changes in testing conditions is gender specific.