Effects of experimental pain on elbow flexor muscles performance after eight weeks of strength training: a pilot study
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17267/2238-2704rpf.2023.e5339Keywords:
Muscle Pain, Exercise, Muscle Strength, RehabilitationAbstract
INTRODUCTION: Strength training has been recommended in clinical rehabilitation, as well as in the physical conditioning of athletes. It is not uncommon, in both cases, the presence of pain during practice; however, to date, there is no consensual information about the effects of acute muscle pain on strength training adaptations. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this pilot study was to evaluate the effects of experimentally induced pain on muscle strength adaptation after an 8-week training period. METHOD: The study included five untrained, healthy male volunteers. Participants were submitted to a strength training protocol (3x/week for 8 weeks) for the elbow flexor muscles. Acute muscle pain was induced at the beginning of each training session through an intramuscular infusion of 2.5 ml of hypertonic saline (6%) into the biceps brachii muscle belly. Maximal dynamic strength (1RM) and maximal voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC) were measured at pre- and after four and eight weeks of training. RESULTS: Maximal dynamic strength increased, on average, 37.3% and 78.4% after four and eight weeks, respectively. However, little, if any, difference was found in MVIC (-1.7% and – 3.0% after four and eight weeks, respectively). CONCLUSION: After 24 strength training sessions, with acute muscle pain induced every session, healthy volunteers increased their ability to produce maximal dynamic strength by more than 75%; however, isometric strength presented only small negative changes.
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Copyright (c) 2023 Venícius de Paula Silva, Valmor Tricoli, Ulysses Fernandes Ervilha
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
