Acute effects of whole-body vibration training with additional loading on lower limb muscle synergies during running

Hyeri Nam; Ruipeng Liu; Menghan Xu; Chaoyu Guo; Van Minh Le; Lin Wang

doi:10.37190/abb/220282

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Acute effects of whole-body vibration training with additional loading on lower limb muscle synergies during running

Acta of Bioengineering and Biomechanics

Volume 28 (2026): Issue 1 (March 2026)

By: Hyeri Nam, Ruipeng Liu, Menghan Xu, Chaoyu Guo, Van Minh Le and Lin Wang

Open Access

|Sep 2026

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this study is to investigate the acute effects of loaded whole-body vibration (WBV) training on both the spatial (muscle weightings) and temporal (activation patterns) characteristics of lower-limb muscle synergies during running.

Methods

Thirty-nine healthy male recreational runners completed running biomechanics assessments before and after a single loaded WBV training session. The intervention comprised dynamic squats on a vibration platform (20 Hz, 6 mm) while wearing a weighted vest. Surface electromyography signals from lower-limb muscles were recorded and decomposed into muscle synergies using nonnegative matrix factorization. Pre- and post-intervention comparisons were conducted using paired-sample t-tests or Wilcoxon signed-rank tests.

Results

Muscle synergy analysis consistently identified five synergies before and after the intervention. Compared with pre-intervention, muscle weights increased for medial gastrocnemius in SYN1 (p = 0.036), peroneus longus in SYN3 (p = 0.045), rectus femoris (p = 0.007), and vastus lateralis (p = 0.049) in SYN5, while those for the vastus medialis in SYN2 (p = 0.013) and vastus lateralis in SYN4 (p = 0.031) decreased. After the intervention, temporal parameters demonstrated a longer activation duration in SYN1 (p = 0.028), as well as earlier onset (p = 0.047), earlier offset (p = 0.033), and earlier peak activation (p = 0.041) in SYN3.

Conclusions

A single-loaded WBV session acutely reorganized muscle synergy, indicating rapid neural adaptations that may enhance propulsion efficiency and landing stability. Overall, these enhancements support the use of single-loaded WBV session as an effective warm-up strategy for running.

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Articles in this issue

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37190/abb/220282 | Journal eISSN: 2450-6303 | Journal ISSN: 1509-409X

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Language: English

Page range: 28 - 40

Submitted on: Dec 22, 2025

Accepted on: Apr 1, 2026

Published on: Sep 21, 2026

Published by: Wroclaw University of Science and Technology

In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services

Publication frequency: 4 issues per year

Keywords:

Related subjects:

Bioengineering and biomedical engineering,

Cellular and tissue engineering,

Biomechanics,

Medicine,

Biomedical engineering,

Materials sciences,

Biomaterials and natural materials

© 2026 Hyeri Nam, Ruipeng Liu, Menghan Xu, Chaoyu Guo, Van Minh Le, Lin Wang, published by Wroclaw University of Science and Technology
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Volume 28 (2026): Issue 1 (March 2026)