Task failure during standing heel raises is associated with increased power from 13 to 50 Hz in the activation of triceps surae

Abstract

The goal of this paper was to investigate the amplitude and sub-100 Hz frequency content of surface electromyography (EMG) signals obtained from agonist, antagonist and synergist muscles during a heel-raise task sustained to failure. Twenty-two healthy adults, 14 men and 8 women participated in the study. Surface EMG data from the raising and lowering phases of the movement were studied in the time (EMG amplitude) and frequency (wavelet transform) domains. For the raising phase, we found a significant increase in the EMG amplitude of all muscles studied throughout the task (P < 0.02); however, for the lowering phase, we found a decrease in overall muscle activation for the medial gastrocnemius and tibialis anterior. Additionally, we found higher 13-30 and 30-50 Hz normalized power during the raising phase for the triceps surae prior to task failure and at task failure compared with the beginning and midway of the task (P < 0.05); during the lowering phase, however, we found higher normalized power from 30 to 50 Hz for the triceps surae (P < 0.01) and higher 13-30 Hz normalized power for the tibialis anterior (P < 0.01) at task failure compared with the beginning and midway of the task. Finally, we showed that a dynamic task performed until failure can induce different activation strategies for agonist, antagonist and synergist muscles, and that the frequency content below 100 Hz contains useful information about the neural activation of these muscles in relation to task failure that is not evident from the EMG amplitude.