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A comparison of muscle stiffness and musculoarticular stiffness of the knee joint in young athletic males and females
journal contribution
posted on 2016-03-18, 10:01 authored by Dan Wang, Giuseppe De Vito, Massimiliano Ditroilo, Daniel FongDaniel Fong, Eamonn DelahuntThe objective of this study was to investigate the gender-specific differences in peak torque (PT), muscle
stiffness (MS) and musculoarticular stiffness (MAS) of the knee joints in a young active population.
Twenty-two male and twenty-two female recreational athletes participated. PT of the knee joint extensor
musculature was assessed on an isokinetic dynamometer, MS of the vastus lateralis (VL) muscle was
measured in both relaxed and contracted conditions, and knee joint MAS was quantified using the free
oscillation technique. Significant gender differences were observed for all dependent variables.
Females demonstrated less normalized PT (mean difference (MD) = 0.4 N m/kg, p = 0.005, g2 = 0.17),
relaxed MS (MD = 94.2 N/m, p < .001, g2 = 0.53), contracted MS (MD = 162.7 N/m, p < .001, g2 = 0.53)
and MAS (MD = 422.1 N/m, p < .001, g2 = 0.23) than males. MAS increased linearly with the external load
in both genders with males demonstrating a significantly higher slope (p = 0.019) than females. The
observed differences outlined above may contribute to the higher knee joint injury incidence and prevalence
in females when compared to males.
Funding
Dan Wang was supported by a research studentship from the China Scholarship Council (CSC).
History
School
- Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences
Published in
JOURNAL OF ELECTROMYOGRAPHY AND KINESIOLOGYVolume
25Issue
3Pages
495 - 500 (6)Citation
WANG, D. ... et al., 2015. A comparison of muscle stiffness and musculoarticular stiffness of the knee joint in young athletic males and females. Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology, 25 (3), pp. 495 - 500.Publisher
© Elsevier Ltd.Version
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
2015Notes
This article was accepted for publication in the Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology [© Elsevier] and the definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jelekin.2015.03.003ISSN
1050-6411Publisher version
Language
- en