Abstract
Levers impose a force-velocity trade-off. In static conditions, a larger moment arm increases a muscle’s force capacity, and a smaller moment arm amplifies output velocity. However, muscle force is influenced by contractile velocity and fiber length, while contractile velocity is influenced by the inertial properties of the lever system. We hypothesize that these dynamic effects constrain the functional output of a muscle-lever system. We predict that there is an optimal moment arm to maximize output velocity for any given muscle-lever configuration. Here we test this hypothesis by computationally building and systematically modifying a simple lever system. We generated 3600 modifications of this model with muscles with varying optimal fiber lengths, moment arms and starting normalized muscle lengths. For each model we simulated the motion that results from 100% activation and extracted the maximum output lever velocity. In contrast to a tradeoff between force and velocity in a lever system, we found that there was, instead, an optimal moment arm which maximized both velocity and total impulse. Increasing output velocity always required increasing output force. From this we conclude that in a dynamic lever system where muscle activation is held constant, there is no tradeoff between force and velocity.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
