Objective To investigate the feasibility and effectiveness of a home-based exercise program in TSP/HAM individuals. Methods Twenty-three TSP/HAM individuals divided in two groups according to Timed Up and Go (TUG) score (<20s vs ≥20s) performed a 20-week home-based exercise program. The primary outcomes were exercise adherence, maximum voluntary isometric contraction of lower limbs (MVIC), Ba...

Aim: Decreased or delayed multifidus and transversus abdominis (TrA) activity, transition of the TrA from tonic to phasic increased activity in more superficial erector spinae muscles are behaviors unique people with lumbar disc herniation (LDH). This study investigates whether abdominal hollowing maneuver (AHM), which activates TrA, can improve rates impaired muscle reciprocal activation lower...

BACKGROUND The main determinant of continuous peripheral nerve block effects--local anesthetic concentration and volume or simply total drug dose--remains unknown. METHODS We compared two different concentrations and basal rates of ropivacaine--but at equivalent total doses--for continuous posterior lumbar plexus blocks after hip arthroplasty. Preoperatively, a psoas compartment perineural ca...

Surface electromyography (sEMG) is used to assess muscle activation during therapeutic exercise, but data are significantly affected by inter-individual variability and requires normalisation of the sEMG signal to enable comparison between individuals. The purpose of this study was to compare two normalisation methods, a maximal method (maximum voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC)) and non-ma...

1) This study examined the ability of human subjects to match a force in their quadriceps muscle during fatigue. Twenty subjects (mean age: 23.4 yrs, mean height: 167.8 cm, mean weight, 62.6 kg) were enrolled in the experiment. In the force-matching task, the quadriceps muscle generated 50% of the MVIC (maximum voluntary isometric contraction) torque under visual control and then without visual...

PURPOSES The present study investigated whether a combination of the thickness and hardness of muscles without muscle tension can be used to estimate muscle strength during knee extension in adult males and females. METHODS Seventy-two males and thirty-three females, whose ages ranged from 18 to 35 years, participated in this study. We measured muscle thickness and hardness in the right anter...

The use of maximal voluntary isometric contractions (MVICs) for the purpose of electromyographic (EMG) data normalization is a well accepted practice within exercise and sport science literature. Benoit et al. (2003) reported that treadmill walking in ACL injured subjects elicited normalized medial gastrocnemius surface EMG values of 160% MVIC, indicating muscular activation during dynamic acti...