Muscular responses evoked by mechanically dorsoflexion of the ankle during running in man

The task dependency of the human stretch reflex has already been studied in activities such as walking and pedaling in comparison to sitting (Grey et al 2002), but never during running. Grey et al. (2002) have shown that the medium component of the stretch reflex is modulated to provide increased control for the postural demands in walking. As the control of posture is even more crucial in running, we investigated the muscular stretch reflex evoked during running via dorsoflexion perturbations generated with a wearable stretching device. Perturbations were delivered to 7 healthy subjects while running at 2.8 m.s-1 on a treadmill. A new wearable device (