Lower Limb Muscular Activation During Transitions to Symmetric High Knee Flexion Postures in Young Females

OCCUPATIONAL APPLICATIONS Movements involving substantial knee flexion, such as squatting and kneeling, are common in many occupations and in some activities of daily living. However, the level of muscle activity required to perform these movements has not been well investigated, and only peak activations have been previously reported from a few leg muscles. This limits our understanding of the physical demands on workers when attempting to understand joint degenerative disease risk or developing guidelines for occupations commonly using these postures. The present study compared kneeling and squatting movements, based on activity levels, from seven leg muscles. Minimal differences were found when descending into these movements, but higher activity from two thigh muscles were observed when ascending from squatting when compared to kneeling. Therefore, future modeling efforts may use these data to verify estimates of muscle activity for joint loading prediction of symmetric descending transitions to high ...