Muscle mechanical properties of strength and endurance athletes and changes after one week of intensive training

Abstract

The study investigates whether tensiomyography (TMG) is sensitive to differentiate between strength and endurance athletes, and to monitor fatigue after either one week of intensive strength (ST) or endurance (END) training. Fourteen strength (24.1 ± 2.0 years) and eleven endurance athletes (25.5 ± 4.8 years) performed an intensive training period of 6 days of ST or END, respectively. ST and END groups completed specific performance tests as well as TMG measurements of maximal radial deformation of the muscle belly (Dm), deformation time between 10% and 90% Dm (Tc), rate of deformation development until 10% Dm (V10) and 90% Dm (V90) before (baseline), after training period (post1), and after 72 hours of recovery (post2). Specific performance of both groups decreased from baseline to post1 (P < 0.05) and returned to baseline values at post2 (P < 0.05). The ST group showed higher countermovement jump (P < 0.05) and shorter Tc (P < 0.05) at baseline. After training, Dm, V10, and V90 were reduced in the ST (P < 0.05) while TMG changes were less pronounced in the END. TMG could be a useful tool to differentiate between strength and endurance athletes, and to monitor fatigue and recovery especially in strength training.

Tensiomyographic Markers Are Not Sensitive for Monitoring Muscle Fatigue in Elite Youth Athletes: A Pilot Study

“…The average values from the two maximal twitches was used for further analysis. The rectus femoris muscle was assessed in a supine position, and an internal knee angle of 120° was kept by using supporting pads (Simola et al, 2016b). …”

“…In this context, a potentially effective tool for detecting post-exercise muscle fatigue is tensiomyography (TMG), which was introduced as a non-invasive, motivation-independent, and involuntary measure of muscle contractile characteristics (i.e., peripheral fatigue) designed to work without producing additional fatigue (Hunter et al, 2012; Simola et al, 2016b). …”

“…The TMG technique is based on the radial deformation of the isolated muscle belly and the time it takes for this action to occur during an isometric twitch contraction evoked by electrical stimulation (Simola et al, 2016b). The key parameters obtained from TMG are muscle displacement, which is representative of muscle tone and contractile force, and the time of the response, which is related to the speed of force generation (Hunter et al, 2012).…”

“…A number of studies have been able to demonstrate fatigue-related changes in TMG measures in adults in cases in which exercise-induced muscle damage and/or muscle soreness as well as a decline in performance, peak force and/or rate of force development was observed (Carrasco et al, 2011; García-Manso et al, 2011; Hunter et al, 2012; Simola et al, 2015, 2016a,b; Wiewelhove et al, 2015b). However, we were unable to find any studies that have examined the usefulness of TMG markers to reflect individual changes in post-exercise muscle fatigue in youth athletes.…”

Commentary: Tensiomyographic Markers Are Not Sensitive for Monitoring Muscle Fatigue in Elite Youth Athletes: A Pilot Study

“…This article contributes to the on-going debate regarding the usefulness of tensiomyography (TMG) in the detection of peripheral muscle fatigue (Wiewelhove et al, 2015; de Paula Simola et al, 2016; Macgregor et al, 2016). In this article, the main conclusion was that TMG was not sensitive to detect significant muscular performance changes and consequently, any muscle fatigue induced by a high intensity interval training (HIT) protocol.…”