James Rob S, Navas Carlos A, Herrel Anthony
Department of Biomolecular and Sport Sciences, Coventry University, James Starley Building, Priory Street, Coventry, CV1 5FB, UK.
J Exp Biol. 2007 Mar;210(Pt 6):923-33. doi: 10.1242/jeb.02731.
Jumping is an important locomotor behaviour used by many animals. The power required to perform a jump is supplied by skeletal muscle. The mechanical properties of skeletal muscle, including the power it can produce, are determined by its composition, which in turn reflects trade-offs between the differing tasks performed by the muscle. Recent studies suggest that muscles used for jumping are relatively fast compared with other limb muscles. As animals get bigger absolute jump performance tends to increase, but recent evidence suggests that adult jump performance may be relatively independent of body size. As body size increases the relative shortening velocity of muscle decreases, whereas normalised power output remains relatively constant. However, the relative shortening velocity of the fastest muscle fibre types appears to remain relatively constant over a large body size range of species. It appears likely that in many species during jumping, other factors are compensating for, or allowing for, uncoupling of jumping performance from size-related changes in the mechanical properties of muscle. In some species smaller absolute body size is compensated for by rapid development of locomotor morphology to attain high locomotor performance early in life. Smaller animal species also appear to rely more heavily on elastic storage mechanisms to amplify the power output available from skeletal muscle. Adaptations involving increased relative hindlimb length and relative mass of jumping muscles, and beneficial alteration of the origin and/or insertion of jumping muscles, have all been found to improve animal jump performance. However, further integrative studies are needed to provide conclusive evidence of which morphological and physiological adaptations are the most important in enhancing jump performance.
跳跃是许多动物所采用的一种重要的运动行为。进行跳跃所需的力量由骨骼肌提供。骨骼肌的力学特性，包括其能够产生的力量，由其组成决定，而组成又反过来反映了肌肉所执行的不同任务之间的权衡。最近的研究表明，用于跳跃的肌肉与其他肢体肌肉相比相对较快。随着动物体型增大，绝对跳跃性能往往会提高，但最近的证据表明，成年动物的跳跃性能可能相对独立于体型大小。随着体型增大，肌肉的相对缩短速度会降低，而标准化功率输出则保持相对恒定。然而，在很大的物种体型范围内，最快肌纤维类型的相对缩短速度似乎保持相对恒定。在许多物种跳跃过程中，其他因素似乎在补偿或允许跳跃性能与肌肉力学特性的大小相关变化脱钩。在一些物种中，较小的绝对体型通过运动形态的快速发育得到补偿，从而在生命早期获得较高的运动性能。体型较小的动物物种似乎也更依赖弹性储存机制来放大骨骼肌可用的功率输出。已经发现，涉及增加相对后肢长度和跳跃肌肉的相对质量，以及有益地改变跳跃肌肉的起点和/或止点的适应性变化，都能提高动物的跳跃性能。然而，需要进一步的综合研究来提供确凿证据，证明哪些形态和生理适应性变化对提高跳跃性能最为重要。
