MUD Mired in time...

Recap: the vertical [Y] axis is 0 degrees at the top and 80 degrees at the bottom. The orange vertical rectangles show typical reported peak/low angle ranges for “stance” and “swing” phases. Commonly, a few degrees of flexion exist throughout (from how markers are placed). Notice that the knee curve after toe off in the blue area looks like a saxophone, a swing instrument! Hmm.. nice mnemonic to remember a falsehood. ?? Left heel strike to left toe-off ... Looking at what the left leg does, the mud version of things has the green zone as left stance phase; the heel lands = contact until the left toe leaves the ground. This works for mud, but is that THAT all functional stance ? For those who choked on this, a “preswing” was allowed as a latter part of stance phase. Mmmmm? You think?

Mud seems to stick as this is the current terminology you see in print. Look. We see about 10° to (pushing it) 15° of knee flexion in green stance phase. Crazy fact: Even in tall snug cylinder casts from groin to ankle directly on skin (of thin gymnasts) we get ~ 10° of flexion (inside the cast!) [This was not easy to measure ]. We conclude that stance flexion is highly momentum & inertially driven and hard to make not happen, aside from surgically fusing the knee joint. Stance curve is trampoline-like yielding to the weight above.