Eversion of the foot at touchdown

Abstract

Because inversion traumatisms constitute e.g. the most frequent sport traumatisms, while at the same time foot eversion is considered as being typical for human plantigrade walking, it may be interesting to analyse walking strategies in non-cursorial mammals, such as primates and predecessors like the marsupial opossum (Didelphis) whose terrestrial locomotion is plantigrade-quadrupedal. As a practical application of some of the above observations and analyses we cite a recent report concerning strength-training, applied to evertor muscles in particular, in youthful gymnasts. This training, performed as a warming-up, produced longer periods of continuous mm. fibulares activity (compared to non-trained gymnasts), to prepare for efficient foot eversion at touchdown.