Fatigue effects on angular kinematics in male recreational runners grouped by functional response

Encarnación-Martínez, A, Sánchez-Ribes, E, Bruna-Lázaro, R, Sanchis-Sanchis, R, Ashby, J ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5340-3095 and Pérez-Soriano, P, 2025. Fatigue effects on angular kinematics in male recreational runners grouped by functional response. Sports Medicine - Open, 11: 107. ISSN 2199-1170

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Abstract

Background: While current evidence on injury risk factors remains limited, this study aims to provide insights into how fatigue-induced changes in biomechanical risk factors (BRF) differ between runners, potentially offering a new approach to understanding the development of running-related injuries. Thirty-nine (N = 39) male recreational runners underwent analysis of lower leg angular kinematics, heart rate, blood lactate levels, and perceived effort before and after a 30-minute exhaustive continuous treadmill running test.
Results: Three functional groups (FG) were identified using the K-means algorithm, which grouped participants based on changes in lower limb angular kinematics between pre- and post-fatigue. While FG1 and FG2 exhibited similar behaviours to maintain their usual running dynamics (e.g. no significant changes in hip flexion at touchdown and toe-off, and similar reductions in leg stiffness after fatigue), FG3 showed more pronounced changes, including increased hip flexion (7.4%) and knee flexion (21%) at touch-down, as well as increased knee flexion at maximal knee flexion (6%) and at the toe-off instant (9%) during the running cycle.
Conclusions: Fatigue-induced alterations in the considered biomechanical risk factors allow for the functional grouping of recreational athletes. Changes in FG3 impact running patterns and alter running economy-related variables, which may be associated with an increased injury risk and could guide future research into tailored training and preventive strategies.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Sports Medicine - Open
Creators:	Encarnación-Martínez, A., Sánchez-Ribes, E., Bruna-Lázaro, R., Sanchis-Sanchis, R., Ashby, J. and Pérez-Soriano, P.
Publisher:	Springer
Date:	1 October 2025
Volume:	11
ISSN:	2199-1170
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1186/s40798-025-00878-x DOI 2543365 Other
Rights:	© the author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Science and Technology
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	16 Dec 2025 09:15
Last Modified:	16 Dec 2025 09:15
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/54872

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