fallacies

Power to the planes?

I’ve just noticed that my blog is still displaying its Christmas card which feels a bit poor as we move into February. Thought I’d reflect on an issue that came up just before Christmas when we were looking at some joint power data from a cohort of amputees. My colleague first presented the data in “components” in the different planes. I commented that I regarded this as wrong and asked her to plot out the total joint power. She came back to me a little later to say that she couldn’t see how to compute this directly within Visual3D.  This caused us to look at their wicki which appeared to confirm what she had found with an explanation that this is how joint power was presented in Move3D, the software out of which Visual3D evolved, and that this “has become common in the biomechanics community”. My initial reaction was that “common in the biomechanics community” does not necessarily correlate with “correct”. To do Visual3D justice, the wicki also points out that you can calculate total power from its “components” but not vice versa which at least makes sense, even if you question how appropriate it is to refer to these as “components” . (Rather bizarrely feedback from C-motion after publication of this post makes it clear that a JOINT POWER SCALAR function has been available in the software for quite a long time as well as the original calculation of “components” and it was the wicki that was/is misleading! The original wording of this paragraph has been modified in acknowledgement of this).

Knee power

The confusion is quite widespread. When Vicon first produced Polygon it only allowed a graphing of total power and then one day I noticed an option to plot the different “components”. I dropped them an e-mail pointing out the mistake and was told that it wasn’t a mistake but a feature that a number of their customers had requested. It was clear that consumer demand was a more important driver of product development than the rigour of the biomechanics!

So what is the issue? As defined in physics, power is what we call a scalar, it cannot be related to any particular direction or plane. Think of it as a bit like your age, another scalar, it doesn’t really make any sense to talk about having age in a particular direction or plane does it. Well, to the classically trained physicist (me!) then talking about sagittal plane power doesn’t make any more sense than talking about sagittal plane age!

Or is it that simple? The quantities in physics that are related to direction are called vectors (position, speed, acceleration are common examples in biomechanics). Vectors are generally represented as a set of three number which are the components in a particular direction. Thus speed (v) is written (vx, vy, vz) with vx representing the component of speed in the x-direction. Joint power is the product of two such vectors, moment (mx, my, mz) and angular velocity (ωx, ωy, ωz) and under the laws of vector multiplication this gives the equation:

P = m.ω = mx ωx+my ωy.+mz ωy

and, although the physicist doesn’t think it has any significance, it is clear that the total power does appear to be made of three separate terms that involve quantities measured along different directions. It is these three terms that have come to be known as the “components” of power. (Notice that throughout this article I’ve put putted inverted commas around “component” when I’ve used it differently to the conventional definition in physics).

So if it is very clear what the terms mean, does it matter if we just choose to use it even if the physicists don’t think we should? I think the answer to this is “yes, it does matter” (I would though, I’m trained as a physicist). To me the whole point of biomechanics is that it allows us to understand the way the body works using rules and relationships that have been developed in the context of wider physics and engineering and which we know are true in all practical circumstances. If we start using terms which are not part of that understanding, no matter how convenient, then we lose that guarantee that they relate to each other in any particular way. It may seem sensible when you set out, but sooner or later it will lead you into trouble.

Power, in this context for example, is the amount of energy generated in a given time. The “components” of power (e.g. mx ωx ) can be negative as well as positive so if, for example, the x “component” is positive and the y and z “components” are negative, then the amount of energy generated in a given time in the x plane (if this is how it is regarded) is greater than the total energy generated in all the planes. This just doesn’t make sense. Are we saying that power is being generated at a joint in one plane at the same time as it is being absorbed in the other planes?! I hope even the non-physicists who read this can appreciate the problem.

The problem with calculating and using “components” of joint powers is that we don’t know under what other circumstances they lead us to nonsensical conclusions. Stick to the rules of physics and we know our conclusions will always be valid (as long as we’ve applied them properly of course!)

One defence of “sagittal plane joint power” which I have a little sympathy with is that, because the components of both angular velocity and moment tend to be considerably greater in the sagittal plane than others, the “sagittal plane joint power” is generally quite a good approximation to the total joint power. Given that in the modern world all these numbers just pop out of the computer anyway though its not at all clear how this is useful. If you want to know the total joint power why not calculate the total joint power? You also need to be careful that if you justify “sagittal plane power” as a good approximation to total joint power, then all you can really say about the transverse and coronal “plane powers” is that they represent the error in this approximation. Attributing physical significance to poorly defined error terms in a calculation is always going to end in tears.

In passing it may be worth commenting that kinetic energy can also be defined as a product of two vectors,

KE = ½mv.v = vx vx+vy vy.+vz vy

but I’ve never heard anyone talking of kinetic energy having components in different directions!

Which bump does what?

There was some discussion at the CMAS meeting in Glasgow last week about what causes the characteristic bumps in the vertical component of the ground reaction. Before you read on it might be worth just stopping to think this through for yourself. Working from the premise that Newton declared that if there is a net force acting on an object then it must be accelerating – which acceleration does the first bump represent and which bump does the second represent?

Several of us admitted to believing that the prevailing wisdom (“what the textbooks say”) is that the first bump represents a deceleration of the centre of mass as it’s downwards movement is arrested and that the second bump is the upwards acceleration as we push off. This is not the correct explanation as Barry Meadows made clear in his presentation.

I’ve plotted some idealised data below to illustrate what is actually happening. The ground reaction under the left limb is represented in red and that under the right limb in right. One thing we  should do more often is to plot the sum of these which of course is the total force acting on the body (Chris Kirtley does do this in his book, 2006). The first interesting thing to note is that the peak total ground reaction actually occurs just before the middle of double support where two relatively modest forces from the different limbs superimpose.

GR and COM

I’ve also plotted the trajectory of the centre of mass (calculated from a double integration of the total ground reaction). It is at its highest in middle single support and lowest in early double support. The dotted black line shows its minimum value. Before this point the COM is travelling downwards and being decelerated and afterwards it is travelling upwards and being accelerated. Thus the first bump of the ground reaction is acting to accelerate the body upwards and the second bump is acting to decelerate as it falls from its peak height during middle single support. This is the opposite to “what the text books say”.

Or are we being unfair to the text books? I’ve gone back to see.

Whittle (2012) and Kaufman and Davis (writing in Rose and Gamble, 2006) get the explanation spot on.

Gage(2009, p54), on the other hand, states that the “body has been accelerating by gravity as it fell from its zenith at mid-stance to its nadir at loading response. As  a result the total force on the limb as it impacts the floor is about 120% of body weight“. This is a bit vague but essentially wrong. The body has actually been decelerating for half of its fall from zenith to nadir such that the vertical component of its speed is virtually zero at foot contact. The first peak of the ground reaction occurs well after the limb impacts the floor and is a result of the centre of mass being accelerated upwards.

Perry (2010, p459) writes that “the first peak (F1) … is increased above bodyweight by the acceleration of the rapid drop of the body mass”. This is also wrong-  the deceleration of the body mass is almost complete by initial contact and has occurred as a consequence of the GR under the trailing limb. The description of the second peak is even more confused – “the second peak (F3) … is modified by the push of the ankle plantar flexor muscles against the floor in addition to the downward acceleration of the COG as the bodyweight falls forwards over the forefoot rocker“.

So there we have it on a random sample of four books that happen to be on my shelf this afternoon two have the explanation correct and two have it essentially wrong.

There is some additional confusion because the fore-aft component of the ground reaction actually has the opposite effect.  In the first half of stance the GR is acting to decelerate the body in a horizontal direction (at the same time as accelerating it in an upwards direction). In the second half of stance the opposite is occurring as the GR is accelerating the body forwards (at the same time as it is decelerating it as it falls vertically).

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Kirtley, C. (2006). Clinical gait analysis (1st ed.). Edinburgh: Elsevier

Levine, D., Richards, J., & Whittle, M. W. (2012). Whittle’s Gait Analysis (5th ed.): Churchill Livingstone.

Rose, J., & Gamble, J. (Eds.). (2006). Human Walking (3rd ed.). Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.

Perry, J., & Burnfield, J. M. (2010). Gait analysis: normal and pathological function (2nd ed.). Pomona, California: Slack.

Gage, J. R., Schwartz, M. H., Koop, S. E., & Novacheck, T. F. (2009). The identification and treatment of gait problems in cerebral palsy (1st ed.). London: Mac Keith Press.