Design and control in the maximization of human vertical jumping

We sought to explore an intriguing question: how can muscle mass be redistributed in leg muscles to allow for maximal jump performance? We performed forward simulations of human jumping movements using a foursegment inverted pendulum model of the skeleton and hilltype models of six leg muscles (soleus, gastrocnemius, vasti, hamstrings, rectus femoris and glutei). Preliminary results suggest that selectively changing relative muscle crosssectional area and muscle lengths can result in jump height improvement by approximately 20%. The resulting muscle distributions are profoundly different than average human muscle distributions. In contrast, modest changes to the timing of muscle onsets are required for the new muscle distributions.