Bolded P-values indicate a significant difference at p<0.05 UNCOVERING THE ELEPHANT: TOWARDS UNIFYING STATIC AND DYNAMIC MEASURES OF SPINE STABILITY

Stability of the spinal column is critical to bear loads, allow movement, and avoid injury and pain [1]. Recently, the analogy of “Six Blind Men and the Elephant” has been used to describe a chasm that exists between different definitions and approaches employed to quantify spine stability [2], with the outcome being that different methods are used without a clear understanding of how they relate to one another. Therefore, the goal of the present study was to directly compare quasistatic lumbar spine rotational stiffness, calculated with an EMG-driven biomechanical model [3], to local dynamic spine stability calculated using Lyapunov analyses of kinematic data [4], during a series of continuous dynamic lifting challenges.