An acute bout of quadriceps muscle stretching has no influence on knee joint proprioception

• Authors: Rui Torres , José Alberto Duarte , Jan Mh Cabri
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The main objective of this study was to determine if an acute bout of static stretching of the quadriceps muscleaffects the sense of joint position, the threshold to detect passive movement, and the sense of force. Thirty young, healthymen (age : 22.1 ± 2.7 years) were randomly divided into two groups. The Stretching Group (n=15) underwentstretching of the dominant quadriceps muscle, which comprised ten passive stretches lasting 30 seconds each, while theControl Group (n=15) remained seated for the same length of time. A repeated-measures analysis of variance was usedto establish intragroup differences over time, and an independent sample t-test was used to compare the dependentvariables between groups at each moment. None of the measurements revealed any significant change between bothgroups in each assessment moment or between moments within groups (p>0.05). This study demonstrated that staticquadriceps muscle stretching has no effect on the sense of knee joint position, threshold to detect passive movement, andforce sense, suggesting that stretching does not have appreciable effect on the spindle firing characteristics and tendonorgans activation.

Keywords

EN

Intrafusal muscle fibres; extrafusal muscle fibres; sense of joint position; kinaesthesia; force sense.

• Publisher: De Gruyter Open
• Journal: Journal of Human Kinetics
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 34
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 33-39

Dates

published

1 - 10 - 2012

online

23 - 10 - 2012

Contributors

author

Rui Torres

• North Polytechnic Institute of Health, Department of Physiotherapy, Paredes, Portugal.
• Technical University of Lisbon, Faculty of Human Kinetics, CIPER, Lisbon, Portugal

author

José Alberto Duarte

• University of Porto, Sport Biology, Porto, Portugal

author

Jan Mh Cabri

• Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, Department of Physical Performance, Oslo, Norway

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10078-012-0061-1