The estimation of individual muscle force during movement has been integral to many researches such as musculoskeletal injury prevention and the design of joint prostheses.Static optimization, dynamic optimization and the EMG-to-force are the three model-based methods widely used in literatures.This paper reviews the three methods and the musculoskeletal modeling and the related issues, pointing out that personal musculoskeletal modeling, new algorithms for estimating muscle force and validation of calculated muscle force would be the emphases for the further research.