Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of neuromuscular electrical stimulation training for 12 weeks on the abdominal muscle size in trained athletes. Male collegiate track and field athletes participated in the present study and were randomly allocated to either training or control groups. Eleven participants of the training group completed a 60-session training program over a 12-week period (23 min/session, 5 days/week) involving neuromuscular electrical stimulation (mostly 20 Hz) for the abdominal muscles in addition to their usual training for the own events. The participants of the control group (n = 13) continued their usual training. Before and after the intervention period, cross-sectional areas of the rectus abdominis and abdominal oblique muscles (the internal and external obliques and transversus abdominis) and subcutaneous fat thickness were measured with magnetic resonance and ultrasound imaging. There were no significant changes in cross-sectional area of the rectus abdominis or abdominal oblique muscles or in subcutaneous fat thickness in the training or control groups after the intervention period. The change in cross-sectional area of the rectus abdominis in each participant was not significantly correlated with pre-training cross-sectional area and neither was the mean value of fat thickness at pre- and post-training. These results suggest that low-frequency (20 Hz) neuromuscular electrical stimulation training for 12 weeks is ineffective in inducing hypertrophy of the abdominal muscles in trained athletes, even when they have a thin layer of subcutaneous fat.
Highlights
Neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) evokes local muscular contractions and can be applied as a stimulus for training
We investigated the effect of NMES training over a 12-week period on the abdominal muscle size in collegiate track and field athletes
Endurance runners who Effects of electrical stimulation training on muscle size in athletes specialize in races over 1500 m, race walkers or female athletes were not recruited in the present study
Summary
Neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) evokes local muscular contractions and can be applied as a stimulus for training. Previous studies have demonstrated that NMES training induces an increase in muscular strength during voluntary contraction even after relatively short training periods (3–6 weeks) [1]. NMES training increased voluntary muscle activation as evaluated by twitch interpolation [2] and surface electromyography [3]. NMES training has been considered to increase voluntary muscular strength in a short period of time through neural adaptations [4].
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