Cross-Education and contralateral irradiation

• Authors: Stefan Panzer , David Schinowski , Daniel Kohle
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Cross-Education is characterized as the improvement in strength of the contralateral homologous muscle after unilateral practice. One potential mechanism to explain this phenomenon is that a unilateral maximal voluntary contraction (MVC) induces an involuntary irradiation of the contralateral homologous muscles. The purpose of the present two studies was to determine if contralateral irradiation is a potential mechanism to explain effects of cross-education. Contralateral irradiation was measured as the EMG co-activation in the homologous unpracticed arm. In Study 1 a unilateral dynamic extension/flexion arm movement was used to activate the triceps. The results indicated that unilateral practice induced a contralateral co-activation on the unpracticed arm. The same result can be reported for an isometric contraction (Study 2). The two studies provided empirical evidence that unilateral MVC did induce an involuntary muscle co-activity on the contralateral homologous muscles with increasing practice time in one testing session.

Keywords

EN

spill-over; strength; EMG; performance; involuntary irradiation

• Publisher: De Gruyter Open
• Journal: Journal of Human Kinetics
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 27
• Pages: 66-79

Dates

published

1 - 3 - 2011

online

6 - 4 - 2011

Contributors

author

Stefan Panzer

• Institute of Sportsciences, University of Muenster, Germany

author

David Schinowski

• Institute of Sportsciences, University of Muenster, Germany

author

Daniel Kohle

• Institute of Sportsciences, University of Muenster, Germany

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10078-011-0006-0