The purpose of this study was to develop a novel scaling method for use in musculoskeletal simulations. Four college athletes performed typical dynamic movement and isometric strength tasks, while we captured motion capture, ground reaction force, and muscle activation data. Data from the strength task were used to determine subject-specific estimates of maximum isometric muscle force. Our method showed that subject-specific multipliers ranged from 2.32 to 3.37, and decreased normalized root mean squared error between simulated and EMG-measured muscle activation by 52-90% compared to standard scaling. Although the scaling method worked for only 4/10 athletes, it may provide more realistic simulation results (e.g., muscle activations) than current methods and improve the use of musculoskeletal simulations in the field of sports biomechanics.
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