Changes in Muscle Thickness after 8 Weeks of Strength Training, Electromyostimulation, and Both Combined in Healthy Young Adults

Abstract

The aim of this study was to verify and compare the effects of electromyostimulation training (EMS), strength training (ST), and both combined (STEMS), through the analysis of the elbow flexors muscle thickness. Forty subjects (24.45 ± 3.53 years), were randomly divided equally in 4 groups: 3 experimental groups and 1 control group. Each experimental group was submitted to one of three interventions, either an ST protocol, an EMS protocol, or a STEMS protocol. The control group (CG) did not perform any type of physical activity. Ultrasonography (US) was used to measure muscle thickness (MT) at 50 and 60% of the distance between the acromion and the olecranon. The results showed a significant difference in the elbow flexors muscle thickness after 8 weeks, both in the STG, EMSG, and STEMSG, but not in the CG. However, no significant differences were observed between the intervention protocols. It seems that an increase in MT can be obtained using either with ST, EMS, or both combined, however, the results doesn’t support the overlap of one method in relation to the others. EMS can be another interesting tool to induce muscle hypertrophy, but not necessarily better.

Critical evaluation of commonly used methods to determine the concordance between sonography and magnetic resonance imaging: A comparative study

“…These problems lead to limited comparability of MT which can be seen in MAPE and MAE between two investigators performing sonography measurement in one participant in a cross-sectional study design. This is of crucial importance when sonography is used to determine changes in MT in pre-post comparisons (Schoenfeld et al, 2017(Schoenfeld et al, , 2019Ehsani et al, 2019) considering this study found a MAPE 4.6-8.6% between investigators for the use of sonography compared to MT percentage increases of 4.5-8% in listed studies (Athiainen et al, 2005;Watanabe et al, 2014;Schoenfeld et al, 2016;Coratella et al, 2018;Matos et al, 2022). Based on this, these values do not seem to be sufficient to describe sonography as a very precise and adequate measurement device which is requested to determine muscle morphology (Ticinesi et al, 2017).…”

“…But, especially if the aim is to determine changes from pre-to post-test, e.g., in sarcopenia (Rustani et al, 2019), or following a training intervention (Ticinesi et al, 2017), an exact determination of possible changes in morphological parameters is requested. This is underlined by documented increases of moderate effect sizes in MCSA or MT (5.56% -8.02%, d = 0.36-0.58) (Schoenfeld et al, 2016;Amirthalingam et al, 2017;Coratella et al, 2018;Prestes et al, 2019;Matos et al, 2022) in different muscle groups. In addition, there were even higher increases of up to 17.78% (from 18.0 ± 4.7 mm to 21.1 ± 16 mm, d = 0.66) (Evangelista et al, 2019) in untrained individuals following an 8-week whole body resistance training intervention and of 13.06% (from 26.8 ± 5.9 mm to 30.3 ± 5.9 mm) with d = 0.59 (Ozaki et al, 2020) in the leg muscles of untrained individuals after a 12-week training intervention -both measured via sonography.…”

“…In current literature, reliability of sonography was typically determined via Pearson correlations and ICC with values of > 0.8 being used to justify the use of sonography as a valid and reliable method to investigate effects of training programs aiming to increase MT and MCSA (Schoenfeld et al, 2016;Simpson et al, 2017;Panidi et al, 2021;Sarto et al, 2021;Yahata et al, 2021;Matos et al, 2022;Warneke et al, 2022). When replacing one measurement procedure with another, it should be assumed that both measure the same parameter, however, there are some significant limitations replacing MRI with sonography, which are of statistical-methodological and content nature.…”

Effects of whole-body electromyostimulation training on upper limb muscles strength and body composition in moderately trained males: A randomized controlled study

“…The ability of satellite cells to regenerate increased with the increase in muscle strength and activity of the subjects (42). In an upper-extremity study (25) of people with trained status, low intensity (60% of 10 RM). EMS combined with a strength training protocol significantly increased elbow flexor muscle thickness, showing a positive hypertrophic effect.…”

“…Interestingly, most previous studies have focused on lower limbs, and the impact on the upper limb is often ignored. A recent study (25) compared the effects of strength training, EMS, and a combination of both on elbow flexor muscle morphological adaptations in trained healthy young adults. The study reported a significant improvement in this parameter after EMS combined with voluntary contraction training.…”