Recent Publications

BACKGROUND/PURPOSE: During exercise, myokine interleukin 6 (IL-6) plays a variety of metabolic roles including acting as a muscular energy sensor and liberating somatic energy stores. While the effects of IL-6 are relatively well-defined during exercise...

OBJECTIVES: Although humans used to be physically active hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers, there has been a recent and ongoing global physical activity transition as billions of people adopt industrial lifestyles primarily in urban areas. In order...

Back endurance is a strong predictor of back pain, but the mechanisms underlying this relationship are not clear. Fatigue reduces muscles' force-generating capacity, so greater fatigability may increase lumbar motion and loading and trunk muscle co...

Accurately estimating kinetic metrics, such as braking and propulsion forces, in real-world running environments enhances our understanding of performance, fatigue, and injury. Wearable inertial measurement units (IMUs) offer a potential solution to...

Chronic medical conditions caused by the inadequate adaptation of the body to modern lifestyles, such as physical inactivity and unhealthy diets, are on the rise. This study assessed whether a comprehensive lifestyle intervention, including high volumes...

All organisms use limited energy to grow, survive, and reproduce, necessitating energy allocation tradeoffs, but there is debate over how selection impacted metabolic budgets and tradeoffs in primates, including humans. Here, we develop a method to...

During vigorous physical activity, contracting muscles secrete a variety of immunomodulatory and metabolic factors called myokines that perform a variety of functions. Foremost among these is interleukin 6 (IL-6), which increases fatty acid mobilization...

Shoes affect the evolved biomechanics of the foot, potentially affecting running kinematics and kinetics that can in turn influence injury and performance. An important feature of conventional running shoes is heel height, whose effects on foot and ankle...

Running injuries are prevalent, but their exact mechanisms remain unknown largely due to limited real-world biomechanical analysis. Reducing overstriding, the horizontal distance that the foot lands ahead of the body, may be relevant to reducing injury...

Over the course of the physical activity transition, machines have largely replaced skeletal muscle as the source of work for locomotion and other forms of occupational physical activity in industrial environments. To better characterize this transition...

Optical motion capture (OMC) is considered the best available method for measuring spine kinematics, yet inertial measurement units (IMU) have the potential to collect data outside the laboratory. When combined with musculoskeletal modeling, IMU...