Breaking Down the Brakes: Mechanical Demands Across Successive Contacts During Maximal 5-m Deceleration
🏃♂️➡️🫷🛑 Which foot contact does the hardest braking work when an athlete stops?
Sideris V, Marques J, Buchheit M. Breaking Down the Brakes: Mechanical Demands Across Successive Contacts During Maximal 5-m Deceleration. Sport Perform Sci Rep. 2026 Oct;325:v1.
Athletes rarely stop in a single foot contact. Braking is shared across successive contacts, but how the demand is spread across them is not well described.
In this pilot study, four recreational male athletes performed maximal 5-m decelerations, analysed contact by contact with motion capture and force platforms.
– The final interval removed the most velocity (44.3 ± 12.7% of the total) and showed the greatest mean deceleration.
– The two earliest intervals removed the most kinetic energy (25.4 ± 7.0% and 27.9 ± 4.3%), at the highest braking power.
– The knee did approximately 79% and 83% of negative joint work at the antepenultimate and penultimate contacts; at the final contact the hip became the largest contributor (52%).
The practical message: match the metric to the question, and look beyond the final contact. With four athletes, the findings are preliminary and hypothesis-generating.
#SPSR #SportScience #Deceleration #Biomechanics #ReturnToSport
