Loading of the hip and knee joints during whole body vibration training

During whole body vibrations, the total contact force in knee and hip joints consists of a static component plus the vibration-induced dynamic component. In two different cohorts, these forces were measured with instrumented joint implants at different vibration frequencies and amplitudes. For three standing positions on two platforms, the dynamic forces were compared to the static forces, and the total forces were related to the peak forces during walking. A biomechanical model served for estimating muscle force increases from contact force increases. The median static forces were 122% to 168% (knee), resp. 93% to 141% (hip), of the body weight. The same accelerations produced higher dynamic forces for alternating than for parallel foot movements. The dynamic forces individually differed much between 5.3% to 27.5% of the static forces in the same positions. On the Powerplate, they were even close to zero in some subjects. The total forces were always below 79% of the forces during walking. The dynamic forces did not rise proportionally to platform accelerations. During stance (Galileo, 25 Hz, 2 mm), the damping of dynamic forces was only 8% between foot and knee but 54% between knee and hip. The estimated rises in muscle forces due to the vibrations were in the same ranges as the contact force increases. These rises were much smaller than the vibration-induced EMG increases, reported for the same platform accelerations. These small muscle force increases, along with the observation that the peak contact and muscle forces during vibrations remained far below those during walking, indicate that dynamic muscle force amplitudes cannot be the reason for positive effects of whole body vibrations on muscles, bone remodelling or arthritic joints. Positive effects of vibrations must be caused by factors other than raised forces amplitudes.