The analysis of knee joint loading during drop landing from different heights and under different instruction sets in healthy males

BACKGROUND: Mechanical loading during exercise has been shown to promote tissue remodeling. Safe and accessible exercise may be beneficial to populations at risk of diminished bone and joint health. We examined the effect of drop height and instruction on knee loading during a drop-landing task and proposed a task that makes use of drop heights that may be appropriate for rehabilitation purposes and functional in daily life to examine transient knee joint loads. METHODS: Twenty males (22.0 ± 2.8 years) performed drop landings from 22 cm (low) and 44 cm (high) heights, each under three instructions: “land naturally” (natural), “softly” (soft), and “stiffly” (stiff). Knee compression force and external flexion moment were estimated using three-dimensional inverse dynamics and normalized to body mass. RESULTS: Peak knee compression force was larger (p < 0.001) for high (17.8 ± 0.63 N/kg) than low (14.8 ± 0.61 N/kg) heights. There was an increase (p < 0.001) in the knee compression force across soft (11.8 ± 0.40 N/kg), natural (17.0 ± 0.62 N/kg), and stiff (20.2 ± 0.67 N/kg) instructions. Peak knee flexion moment in high-natural (2.12 ± 0.08 Nm/kg) was larger (p < 0.001) than in high-soft (1.88 ± 0.08 Nm/kg), but lower than in high-stiff (2.23 ± 0.08 Nm/kg). No differences in peak knee flexion moment were observed across instructions for the low height. CONCLUSIONS: We propose a drop-landing task that creates a scalable increase in knee compression loading. The absence of increased knee flexion moment with drop from the low height, compared to high, suggests that individuals could perform the task without incremental risk of knee injury. This task could be used in future studies to examine the effect of acute bouts of mechanical loading on bone and cartilage metabolism.