gms | German Medical Science

Objective: Electromyography (EMG) completes electroneurography, representing a recording technique of the action potentials produced by the skeletal muscular fibers during repose state, voluntary muscular contraction and after muscle direct stimulation or nervous fibers that innervate the studied muscle indirect stimulation. The test can be done for an experimental or clinical purpose. Our purpose was to study the electromyography activity of all tested professional sportsmen categories (fence, handball, volleyball) to compare the obtained data and to identify characteristic neurophysiologic patterns, associate to professional sportive activity, which can contribute to a correct athletes’ selection and a training improvement, thus emphasizing the inter-sports differences.

Material/Methods: The group of subjects participating in the research was formed of healthy athletes, who received a medical – sportive confirmation to participate at the trainings and sport competitions. We studied a group formed of 27 male athletes (age=20±3years), right-handed, fencers (n=7), handball players (n=10) and volleyball sportsmen (n=10), active for between 7 and 10 years exclusively in either one of the studied sports, with homogenous average ages, heights and weights and training regime.

In our research regarding muscular performance, we have chosen the usage of surface EMG correlated with the simultaneous recording of the developed muscle force, by myomechanography (MMG), with the purpose of finding a synthetically relation between the muscle force and the EMGS parameters. For this we have used modern methods of computerized processing of the EMGS recordings, methods which are used frequently only by the high rank researches, resulting original parameters and indices for better analysis of muscle contraction.

Surface EMG was measured to all athletes, at the same time with the mechanogram, during maximal isometric contractions, performed by hand fingers flexors muscles, till fatigue, obtained by squeezing a force traductor with right and left hand, succesively. We recorded the muscular biopotentials, using surface electrodes (BIOPAC) made from silver, the measuring was made simultaneously on EMG BIOPAC MP 150 two channles connected to a PC Pentium IV, were used three electrodes, two active electrodes for each channel and a reference one placed on the distal extremity of the forearm.

Results: Fencers recorded the highest values for indexes like intercept, slope, percent variation, in the area of time and mixed parameters, frequency parameters define superior values for voleyball players and for most of the mechanogram parameters, handball players presented the highest values.

Conclusion: EMG patterns contribute to a correct selection of the sportsmen, to improve performances through specific training, being so, a trainers guide, in order to establish standards training.