Abstract
This study aimed to determine the differences in the EMG of thigh among film-welded compression suits (WCS), film-free compression suit (CS) and a loose sportswear during knee joint exercise. To differentiate the effect of clothing variable accurately, two types of compression suits were made elaborately using the same material and 3D pattern. Difference in two compression suits is only whether film was welded or not. EMG was observed during isokinetic exercise of flexion and extension, comprising four sets of maximum contraction of thigh at the angular velocity of 60, 180 and 240°/s using Cybex 660. When the WCS was worn, the mean muscle activities of the anterior thigh was generally higher during extension, especially in the left rectus femoris (RF) and right vastus oblique medialis (VMO) throughout the exercise. Wearing WCS enhanced mean muscle activities and decreased muscle fatigue of VL and VMO at each angular velocity, however, it did not support the mean muscle activity nor the fatigue of the hamstrings in almost all conditions of exercise. Muscle-specific EMG implies that film-welded compression suit designed in this study is beneficial to VMO, inducing high muscle activity with less fatigue during knee extension.
Highlights
Compression garments are widely used among athletes, and studies have been conducted to determine the compression effect on the wearers’ physiology and performance in sports activities
Mean muscle activities during total exercise sets When all data across the exercise protocol were analyzed during total exercise sets, mean muscle activities of the three anterior muscles with welded compression suit (WCS) were generally higher than those with compression suit (CS) or basic sportswear (BS) during knee extension (Table 1)
Mean muscle activity of the left rectus femoris (RF) was significantly higher with the WCS (121.74 μV) than with the CS (88.76 μV) (p < .05, Table 1) and that of the right vastus medialis oblique (VMO) with the WCS (192.0 μV) was significantly higher than that with the BS (141.5 μV) (p < .05) during knee extension. The result of this experiment was supported by the previous study in that taping on compression pants resulted in higher mean muscle activity of thigh than kinesio taping directly on the skin (Choi et al 2016)
Summary
Compression garments are widely used among athletes, and studies have been conducted to determine the compression effect on the wearers’ physiology and performance in sports activities. Compression pants facilitated angular velocity during drop landing (Lee et al 2017), controversy regarding the effectiveness of compression garments on the biomechanics or performance still exists depending on various sports activities and experimental conditions, such as participant conditions or compression items (Hsu et al 2017; Jimenez et al 2016). To date, there has been very little research on the performance of muscles depending on the design elements of the compression suits such as a reinforcing film welded on the compression suit, which is analogous to kinesio taping on skin
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