The use of musculoskeletal simulation software has become a useful tool for modelling joint and muscle forces during human activity, including in reduced gravity because direct experimentation is difficult. Knowledge of muscle and joint loads can better inform the design of exercise protocols and exercise countermeasure equipment. In this study, the LifeModeler (San Clemente, CA, USA) biomechanics simulation software was used to model a squat exercise. The initial model using default parameters yielded physiologically reasonable hip-joint forces but no activation was predicted in some large muscles such as rectus femoris, which have been shown to be active in 1-g performance of the activity. Parametric testing was conducted using Monte Carlo methods and combinatorial reduction to find a muscle parameter set that more closely matched physiologically observed activation patterns during the squat exercise. The rectus femoris was predicted to peak at 60.1% activation in the same test case compared to 19.2% activation using default parameters. These results indicate the critical role that muscle parameters play in joint force estimation and the need for exploration of the solution space to achieve physiologically realistic muscle activation.
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