Abstract Background. The pre-exhaustion (PE) method is a way to target a stronger muscle in a multi-joint exercise by isolating the stronger muscle immediately before the multi-joint exercise. It has been shown that this principle give greater magnitude of muscular activation in the synergistic secondary mover. There is also some indications that the PE method gives a greater neuromuscular activation of the primary mover when PE the synergist. If there are any differences between men and women in muscle activity has never been investigated before. Men have a greater absolute strength than women, especially in their upper body. There are still conflicting results if they also have greater relative strength. Aim. The purpose of the present study was to investigate if there were any neuromuscular differences between men and women when PE triceps brachii before bench press and if there was any differences in relative strength during 10RM bench press. Methods. 15 men and 15 women was randomly signed up in two different protocols. Protocol 1 started with bench press at 10 repetition maximum (10RM) and after five minutes of recovery, they performed the pre-exhaustion exercise (triceps extensions to failure) immediately before a second round of bench press with the same load on the barbell. Protocol 2 started with triceps extensions to failure immediately before bench press at their 10RM. They also had five minutes of recovery before they performed 10 repetitions of bench press. The magnitude of muscular activation were collected with surface electromyography and then processed through average root mean square (RMS). The values were normalized to muscular voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC) and expressed as percent of MVIC. The muscles that was analysed was triceps brachii (TB), pectoralis major (PM) and deltoideus anterior (DA). Results. The results showed that women had a statistically significantly higher muscular activity in all three muscles; PM (p=0.001) TB (p=0.023) and DA (p=0.047) after pre-exhaustion of TB before bench press compared to only bench press. Men showed only a statistical significant higher activation in PM (p=0.003) and a trend of higher activation in DA (p=0.061). There was a statistically significant difference in muscle activity between women and men in TB (p=0.015) but not in DA (p=0.902) and PM (p=0.436). There was no statistically significant difference between relative strength (volume load/fat free mass) (p=0.775) nor number of repetitions in bench press after PE of TB (p=0.713) between the sexes. Conclusion. The main findings in this study is that it was a statistically significant difference in neuromuscular activity in TB between men and women when PE was applied to TB before the bench press compared to bench press only, but no difference in relative strength.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hh-33922 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Fälth, Jenny |
| Publisher | Högskolan i Halmstad, Akademin för ekonomi, teknik och naturvetenskap |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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