Prophylactic effect of hot pack on symptoms of eccentric exercise‐induced muscle damage of the wrist extensors

Abstract

This study investigated whether hot pack treatment could provide prophylactic effects on muscle damage induced by eccentric exercise of the wrist extensors. Twenty-eight healthy men (age 2191 years, weight 65916 kg, height 17196 cm) were randomly placed into hot pack (n 0 14) and control (n 0 14) groups. All participants performed an exercise consisting of 300 maximal eccentric contractions of the wrist extensors of the non-dominant arm using an isokinetic dynamometer. A hot pack was applied for 20 min to the wrist extensors of the exercised arm before the exercise for the hot pack group. The control group received no treatment before the exercise. Measured variables included pain intensity assessed by a visual analogue scale and a modified Likert's scale, cold thermal pain threshold, pressure pain threshold (PPT), range of motion in active wrist flexion (ROM-AF) and extension (ROM-AE), range of motion in passive wrist flexion (ROM-PF) and extension (ROM-PE), grip strength, and wrist extension strength. Changes in these variables before, immediately after, and 1 to 8 days following the exercise were compared between groups by a two-way repeated measures ANOVA. All outcome measures from both groups (except for the cold thermal pain threshold of the hot pack group) demonstrated a significant change within the first 2Á3 days following exercise. Significant differences between groups were only found at a single point in time for PPT, ROM-PF, ROM-PE and ROM-AE, and the changes were smaller for the hot pack group in comparison to the control group. These results suggest that the prophylactic effects of hot pack treatment on eccentric exercise-induced muscle damage of the wrist extensors are limited.

Turning Up the Heat: An Evaluation of the Evidence for Heating to Promote Exercise Recovery, Muscle Rehabilitation and Adaptation

“…Khamwong et al found beneficial effects when participants applied hot packs [23] or entered a sauna [24] before eccentric exercise. Specifically, both hot packs and sauna reduced the loss in range of motion of the wrist resulting from eccentric exercise.…”

Effectiveness of air pulsed cryotherapy on delayed onset muscle soreness of elbow flexors following eccentric exercise

“…6 DOMS is usually cited by coaches and athletes as being detrimental to recovery and performance, the rapid reversion of DOMS in athletes is essential for both function restoration and regain of sports performance. 6,7 Therefore, several modalities of recovery have been used to hasten the recovery period from DOMS which include warm-up and cool-down, 8 soft tissue massage, 3 stretching exercise, 9 electrotherapy, 10 thermotherapy 11 and cryotherapy. 7,12 However, the efficacy of such interventions on exercise induced muscle damage remains equivocal.…”

To Compare the Effect of Vibration Therapy and Massage in Prevention of Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS)

“…Massage can reduce the tension on the muscle tendon unit that affects the visco-eleastic component of the tissue leading to an increase in competence of the muscle and improvement of muscular flexibility reducing muscle stiffness and also increasing blood flow [14]. Researchers have demonstrated that massage has preventive effects ,decrease muscle soreness and other symptoms [15][16][17][18][19].…”