Rowing is a very physical activity requiring full range of joint motion associate with the generation of large forces at the feet and hands. The low back joints act to transfer these forces between the upper and lower extremities. As a result, low back injuries are the most common injuries observed in rowing, comprising 25-45% of the reported injuries requiring a medical attention (Teitz et al. 2001). Although many studies have been conducted on low back injuries in rowing during the last decades, only few clinical implications for the practitioners have been published until now. Like recent studies focused on asymmetry (e.g. Fohanno et al. 2015), the number and complexity of the structures involved make difficult to establish easyto- use indexes that would help practitioners to prevent rowers from low back injuries. The estimation of low back muscle kinematics may help to better understand the mechanisms that lead to low back injuries. This approach, however, requires (i) adapting prior musculoskeletal models published in gait analysis to both rowing specificities and (ii) estimating the low back muscles maximum passive length to be used as the reference. This study aimed at assessing low back muscles kinematics during rowing. We hypothesized that the maximum lengths reached by the low back muscles during the rowing cycle are close to their respective maximum passive lengths and individual technique leads to differences between rowers.
© Copyright 2017 Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering. Taylor & Francis. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.