Engineering/Jogging Question

[Chesterton]

A jogger is running along a slightly slanted surface, like a few degrees from being flat, so that one foot is downhill and one is uphill. My intuition tells me that as far as work and stress in carrying the body, the uphill leg is doing more work, and the downhill leg is receiving more stress. Would that be right?

 

[SkyWriting]

A jogger is running along a slightly slanted surface, like a few degrees from being flat, so that one foot is downhill and one is uphill. My intuition tells me that as far as work and stress in carrying the body, the uphill leg is doing more work, and the downhill leg is receiving more stress. Would that be right?

You need to clarify "Stress". The answer is likely the uphill is under stress and doing more work relieving the downhill leg of both stress and work. But "stress" is not the correct word.

 

[quatona]

Not sure how you define "work" and "stress" for purposes of this question.
I think it´s actually the back muscles of the runner that get to do a lot of work.

 

[timewerx]

A jogger is running along a slightly slanted surface, like a few degrees from being flat, so that one foot is downhill and one is uphill. My intuition tells me that as far as work and stress in carrying the body, the uphill leg is doing more work, and the downhill leg is receiving more stress. Would that be right?

The impact does feel kinda stronger downhill.

I guess because the legs are straighter upon meeting the pavement downhill which is less able to absorb the impact, plus, you're probably going faster too.

 

[[serious]]

A jogger is running along a slightly slanted surface, like a few degrees from being flat, so that one foot is downhill and one is uphill. My intuition tells me that as far as work and stress in carrying the body, the uphill leg is doing more work, and the downhill leg is receiving more stress. Would that be right?

If the jogger is running downhill, the impact on the downhill leg will be greater. Basically, running involves a a push off launch phase, a parabolic flight phase, and a foot strike on landing. On a flat surface, the strike impact is precisely the force of the launch. When running downhill, you get the launch force PLUS the drop due to the ground being lower than when you launched. With proper form, less energy can be used as you get extra time to travel in the flight phase.

All of this is reversed running uphill.

Running sideways along a slope might produce such a scenario as you describe though since the launch of the uphill foot determines the landing of the downhill foot. This, on a mild slope, this would be pretty minimal as your feet would be stiking mostly in line. On a slope significant enough to cause a balance issue, you would probably widen your stance and get a meaningful impact though.