Purpose: During race walking, the athlete executes specific patterns of movement to meet the judge`s requirements. Thus, maintaining continuous foot contact with the ground and keeping the supporting leg straight may put specific demands on muscle activation patterns. The objective of this research was to identify the changes in the lower limb muscle activity when the walker increased the speed of walking.Basic procedures: The study was carried out at the indoor running track of the University of Physical Education in Krakow in 2015. The task of the subject was to walk a 60 m distance at different speeds. The subject walked with wearing shoes. The electromyographic (EMG) activity of the muscles was recorded using the telemetric EMG system. Raw signals of all the muscles were recorded simultaneously with foot-floor contact signals from foot switches fixed to the plantar surface of the foot.Main findings: The study revealed that muscle leg activity had similar patterns at all speeds, however, a higher speed of walking put higher demands on the muscles. Due to that, we observed increased activity of the muscles when the subject walked faster. In general, the muscles were more active at the time of foot contact. In terms of kinematic data, we found that the numberof steps for the chosen unit of time (10 s) increased from 13 strides at 9 km/h to 16 strides at 15.5 km/h. At the same time, the stride was lenghtened from 1.9 to 2.7 m.Conclusions: The presence of an `atypical` burst of activity in the proximal muscles in late stance during racewalking requires special attention from the coaches during the training process of athletes.
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