A Muscle-Specific Rehabilitation Training Method Based onMuscle Activation and the Optimal Load Orientation Concept

Training based on muscle-oriented repetitive movements has been shown to be beneficial for the improvement of movement abilities in human limbs in relation to fitness, athletic training, and rehabilitation training. In this paper, a muscle-specificrehabilitation training method based on the optimal load orientation concept (OLOC) was proposed for patients whose motorneurons are injured, but whose muscles and tendons are intact, to implement high-efficiency resistance training for the shoulder muscles, which is one of the most complex joints in the human body. A three-dimensional musculoskeletal model ofthe human shoulder was used to predict muscle forces experienced during shoulder movements, in which muscles that contributed to shoulder motion were divided into 31 muscle bundles, and the Hill model was used to characterize the force-length properties of the muscle. According to the musculoskeletal model, muscle activation was calculated to represent the muscle force. Thus, training based on OLOC was proposed by maximizing the activation of a specific muscle under eachposture of the training process. The analysis indicated that the muscle-specific rehabilitation training method based on the OLOC significantly improved the training efficiency for specific muscles. The method could also be used for trajectory planning, load magnitude planning, and evaluation of training effects