Week 7: Training Effects on Muscle and Forces in Locomotion

This week closes the muscle physiology unit with the plastic adaptive responses of muscle to training and detraining, then begins the locomotion unit with the mechanical demands of walking and running and how those demands set the stage for the metabolic energy cost of locomotion.

Lectures

• Lecture 15: Integrative Muscle Function — Training Effects on Muscle (29 slides) Principles of training (overload, progression, specificity, reversibility); endurance and resistance signaling cascades; time courses of training, detraining, retraining, and muscle memory; concurrent training interference.

• Lecture 16: Forces and Energy Cost in Locomotion (37 slides) Newton’s laws of legged locomotion; ground reaction forces in walking and running; inverted-pendulum and bouncing-spring models; the collisional perspective on step-to-step transitions; scaling of force and posture with speed and body size.

• Week 7 Friday Review and Discussion (13 slides) Evaluating evidence quality; two competing models of exercise-associated muscle cramps and the pickle-juice paradox; hands-on review of muscle work loops, energy flow in muscle–tendon systems, the human foot as an adjustable spring, and the role of stimulation timing in cyclic contractions.