Residual force enhancement is affected more by quadriceps muscle length than stretch amplitude

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Abstract

Little is known about how muscle length affects residual force enhancement (rFE) in humans. We therefore investigated rFE at short, long, and very long muscle lengths within the human quadriceps and patellar tendon (PT) using conventional dynamometry with motion capture (rFE_TQ) and a new, non-invasive shear-wave tensiometry technique (rFE_WS). Eleven healthy male participants performed submaximal (50% max.) EMG-matched fixed-end reference and stretch-hold contractions across these muscle lengths while muscle fascicle length changes of the vastus lateralis (VL) were captured using B-mode ultrasound. We found significant rFE_TQ at long (7±5%) and very long (12±8%), but not short (2±5%) muscle lengths, whereas rFE_WS was only significant at the very long (38±27%), but not short (8±12%) or long (6±10%) muscle lengths. We also found significant relationships between VL fascicle length and rFE_TQ (r=0.63, p=.001) and rFE_WS(r=0.52, p=.017), but relationships were not significant between VL fascicle stretch amplitude and rFE_TQ (r=0.33, p=.126) or rFE_WS(r=0.29, p=.201). PT shear-wave speed-angle relationships did not agree with estimated PT force-angle relationships, which indicates that estimating PT loads from shear-wave tensiometry might be inaccurate. We conclude that increasing muscle length rather than stretch amplitude contributes more to rFE during submaximal voluntary contractions of the human quadriceps.

Data availability

The final processed data can be found at: https://figshare.com/s/d66e2c7400480dd0a059. It provides source data of figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

The following data sets were generated

(2022) Data_Residual force enhancement within the human quadriceps is greatest during submaximal stretch-hold contractions at a very long muscle length
figshare.

https://figshare.com/s/d66e2c7400480dd0a059

Article and author information

Author details

Patrick Bakenecker

Human Movement Science, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

For correspondence
Patrick.Bakenecker@rub.de

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-3938-2806
Tobias Weingarten

Human Movement Science, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Daniel Hahn

Human Movement Science, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

For correspondence
Daniel.Hahn@rub.de

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-9401-5478
Brent James Raiteri

Human Movement Science, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

For correspondence
Brent.Raiteri@rub.de

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-2078-9075

Funding

The authors declare that there was no funding for this work.

Ethics

Human subjects: Participants gave free written informed consent prior to participating in the study. All experimental procedures were approved by the local Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Sport Science at Ruhr University Bochum and conformed with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.