Background Physical activity has many benefits, including the prevention of multiple different diseases. One way to perform physical activity is through resistance training, where some sort of resistance is used to increase the load on the muscles during contraction. For training the upper-body, the bench press exercise is a good option. However, not everyone has the equipment to perform this exercise. The push-up exercise has a similar movement pattern and uses the same muscles as well as no requirement for equipment. Therefore, it would be interesting to see which exercise activates the pectoralis major and triceps brachii, respectably, more. Aim The aim of this study was to compare the muscle activation of the pectoralis major and triceps brachii during push-up and bench press with push-up replicated resistance through EMG-testing. Method 21 male subjects participated in this study. EMG measurement was used on the pectoralis major and triceps brachii to record muscle activity. Following a MVIC test for both muscles, to get a reference value, five repetitions of the bench press exercise at 64% of the subject’s body weight, at rate of 40 beats per minute. Following a three-minute rest, the subjects performed five repetitions of the push-up exercise at the same rate. Three of the five repetitions were selected for further analysis. All data collected was converted to percent of MVIC (%MVIC) before any analysis. Results The results of this study showed a significantly higher activation of the pectoralis major during the bench press exercise compared to the push-up exercise (p=0.014). The results did not show a significant difference in the activation of the triceps brachii during the two exercises. Conclusion This study shows that for training the pectoralis major, the bench press exercise is preferable to the push-up exercise at the same load. For training the triceps brachii, the bench press and pushup exercises seem interchangeable at the same load.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hh-33941 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Danielsson, Christopher |
| 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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