
Fig. 7. Jumping performance of model 2. (A) Model 2 was placed in a normal starting
position. The colored arrows represent ground reaction forces (GRFs) as in
Fig. 6. In addition, the GRF
per unit N m of torque is shown for hip external rotation (yellow) and hip
adduction (blue). (B) The path of the center of mass (COM) of the frog during
the ground-contact phase for 500 simulation runs in which the magnitudes of
hindlimb torques were randomly varied. A large range of take-off angles was
produced from a single starting position. The blue path in BD
represents the simulation run in which the actual torques produced by the real
frog were used to drive the relaxed degrees of freedom. The red path
represents a simulation run in which hip external rotation was increased
fourfold compared with that produced by the real frog during a jump. (C) The
vertical VV and horizontal VH
velocities of the COM for the red simulation run matched those of the real
frog (black lines) better than the blue run. However, this required an
unphysiological level of external rotation torque. (D) The predicted jump
distances for the red and blue runs were smaller than those for the real frog.
(E) Unlike model 1, the vertical and horizontal velocities for each simulation
run were not correlated with one another (i.e. take-off angle varied from
trial to trial). This was because individual torque components produced
different ratios of vertical to horizontal GRF (see arrows in A). (F) The
magnitudes of the hip (HE) and ankle extensor (AE) torques were significantly
(P<0.01; r2=0.69 and
r2=0.63, respectively) correlated with variations in the
peak horizontal velocity among the simulation runs. Only the magnitude of the
hip external rotation (HR) torque was significantly (P<0.01,
r2=0.59) correlated with variations in the peak vertical
velocity.