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Bilateral deficit in explosive force production is not caused by changes in agonist neural drive..pdf (397.25 kB)

Bilateral deficit in explosive force production is not caused by changes in agonist neural drive

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posted on 2014-10-07, 14:00 authored by Matthew Buckthorpe, Matthew PainMatthew Pain, Jonathan FollandJonathan Folland
Bilateral deficit (BLD) describes the phenomenon of a reduction in performance during synchronous bilateral (BL) movements when compared to the sum of identical unilateral (UL) movements. Despite a large body of research investigating BLD of maximal voluntary force (MVF) there exist a paucity of research examining the BLD for explosive strength. Therefore, this study investigated the BLD in voluntary and electrically-evoked explosive isometric contractions of the knee extensors and assessed agonist and antagonist neuromuscular activation and measurement artefacts as potential mechanisms. Thirteen healthy untrained males performed a series of maximum and explosive voluntary contractions bilaterally (BL) and unilaterally (UL). UL and BL evoked twitch and octet contractions were also elicited. Two separate load cells were used to measure MVF and explosive force at 50, 100 and 150 ms after force onset. Surface EMG amplitude was measured from three superficial agonists and an antagonist. Rate of force development (RFD) and EMG were reported over consecutive 50 ms periods (0–50, 50–100 and 100–150 ms). Performance during UL contractions was compared to combined BL performance to measure BLD. Single limb performance during the BL contractions was assessed and potential measurement artefacts, including synchronisation of force onset from the two limbs, controlled for. MVF showed no BLD (P = 0.551), but there was a BLD for explosive force at 100 ms (11.2%, P = 0.007). There was a BLD in RFD 50–100 ms (14.9%, P = 0.004), but not for the other periods. Interestingly, there was a BLD in evoked force measures (6.3–9.0%, P,0.001). There was no difference in agonist or antagonist EMG for any condition (P$0.233). Measurement artefacts contributed minimally to the observed BLD. The BLD in volitional explosive force found here could not be explained by measurement issues, or agonist and antagonist neuromuscular activation. The BLD in voluntary and evoked explosive force might indicate insufficient stabiliser muscle activation during BL explosive contractions.

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

PLOS ONE

Volume

8

Issue

3

Pages

? - ? (8)

Citation

BUCKTHORPE,M.W., PAIN, M.T.G., and FOLLAND, J.P., 2013. Bilateral deficit in explosive force production is not caused by changes in agonist neural drive. PLOS ONE, 8 (3), e57549.

Publisher

Public Library of Science (© 2013 Buckthorpe et al)

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/

Publication date

2013

Notes

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

ISSN

1932-6203

Language

  • en

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