The effects of strengthening exercise, stretching and meditation on electromyography onset timing of the rectus femoris and gastrocnemius during vertical jump performance in healthy adults

Abstract

Objective: Jump training helps increase the muscle power by improving the muscle strength and reaction time of the muscle in operation. The purpose of this study was to identify the effects of strengthening, stretching exercise and meditation on electromyographic (EMG) onset timing of rectus femoris and gastrocnemius muscle during vertical jump performance. Design: Cross-sectional study. Methods: Ten healthy adults (5 male and 5 female) who were familiar with the vertical jumping task and had no lower extremity injuries or any bone or joint disorders, were recruited for this study. Muscle onset timing was measured by surface EMG. After EMG onset timing were measured during performing three baseline vertical jump trials, strengthening and stretching exercises of the rectus femoris and gastrocnemius, and meditation were performed in random order. EMG onset timing was measured during vertical jump after intervention, respectively. EMG value was averaged for the three trials and analyzed using one-way repeated ANOVA. Results: During vertical jump, EMG onset timing of gastrocnemius was a significant difference after intervention (p<0.05), and then there was significantly faster in strengthening exercise than meditation (p<0.05). Conclusions:These results indicate the potential positive effect of performing strengthening exercise of the gastrocnemius before a jumping event. Future research is required to identify the effects of intervention over a long period.

Muscle Activation Sequence in Flywheel Squats

“…They can be divided into single-joint or, more complex, multi-joint, or whole-body neural adaptations [ 22 ]. While firing frequency, synchronization of motor units, spinal reflexes, antagonist (co)activation, and some cortical adaptations can be assessed from single joint movements [ 23 ], between-muscle coordination can then be additionally assessed in a combination of multiple joints [ 24 , 25 , 26 ]. Muscular activation strategies to explosive movements, such as squat jump (SJ) and countermovement jump (CMJ), was found to be specific [ 26 , 27 ] and follows precise muscle control in a feedforward manner [ 28 ].…”

“…The principle optimizes the timing of segment motion in order to maximize the vertical velocity of the body’s center of mass and allow for efficient energy to be transferred from proximal to distal segments [ 31 , 34 ]. It could be, therefore, speculated that muscle activation timing is individually conditioned—in order for one to optimally exploit their muscle properties—and have to be optimized [ 25 , 35 ] to enhance performance in vertical jumps [ 36 ].…”