OBJECTIVE To compare Kendo players with active elderly adults in terms of quality of life, functional aspects (muscle strength, postural balance) and body composition. METHODS This was a controlled cross-sectional study. Twenty elderly individuals were divided into two groups: the Kendo group, with an average age of 71.8 (5.4) years, and the Control group, with an average age of 73.1 (4.8) ye...

The ability to perform aerobic or anaerobic exercise varies widely among individuals, partially depending on their muscle-fiber composition. Variability in the proportion of skeletal-muscle fiber types may also explain marked differences in aspects of certain chronic disease states including obesity, insulin resistance, and hypertension. In untrained individuals, the proportion of slow-twitch (...

Each skeletal muscle of the body contains a unique composition of "fast" and "slow" muscle fibers, each of which is specialized for certain challenges. This composition is not static, and the muscle fibers are capable of adapting their molecular composition by altered gene expression (i.e., fiber type conversion). Whereas changes in the expression of contractile proteins and metabolic enzymes i...

Aging is associated with changes in body composition and muscle strength. This review aimed to determine the relation between different body composition measures and muscle strength measures and functional decline in older men and women. By use of relevant databases (PubMed, Embase, and CINAHL) and keywords in a search from 1976 to April 2012, 50 articles were reviewed that met the inclusion cr...

Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) has been introduced and globally gained increasing attention on its usefulness. Continuous application of EMS may lead to the increment of muscle mass and indirectly will increase the strength. This study can be used as an alternative to help people especially those living a sedentary lifestyle to improve their muscle activity without having to go through a h...

The aim of this study was to determine the relationships among muscle fiber-type composition, fiber diameter, and myogenic regulatory factor (MRF) gene expression in different skeletal muscles during development in naturally grazing Wuzhumuqin sheep. Three major muscles (i.e. the Longissimus dorsi (LD), Biceps femoris (BF) and Triceps brachii (TB)) were obtained from 20 Wuzhumuqin sheep and 20 ...

The ac conductivity spectra of xAgI-(1 - x)AgPO(3) fast-ion conducting glasses spanning the flexible, intermediate (isostatically rigid), and stressed rigid phases are analyzed. The rescaled frequency-dependent spectra are mapped into time-dependent mean-square displacements out of which a typical length scale characterizing the spatial extent sqrt[(R(2)(∞))] of nonrandom subdiffusive regions o...