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Control of Movement and Posture
Published in Nassir H. Sabah, Neuromuscular Fundamentals, 2020
Because muscles can only pull and cannot push, motion in opposite directions at a given joint requires the action of two opposing sets of muscles, the agonists and the antagonists for the motion involved (Section 9.3.4). Thus, the agonists and the antagonists are alternately activated in the execution of rhythmic movements. In the simplest form of walking, for example, the hips are alternately flexed and extended by different sets of muscles, which are the agonists and antagonists for flexion or extension. Inhibition of antagonist muscles when the agonist muscles are activated is referred to as reciprocal inhibition (Section 11.2.2.2).
Acute response on general and sport specific hip joint flexibility to training with novel sport device
Published in Sports Biomechanics, 2021
Dominik Hoelbling, Manfred Grafinger, Martin Mattaeus Smiech, Dea Cizmic, Peter Dabnichki, Arnold Baca
Autogenic inhibition (or inverse myotatic reflex) describes that after a maximum contraction, a muscle is forced to lower the residual tension. Therefore, the reflex is used to force significant short-term adaptions in ROM. Reciprocal inhibition is “a process that inhibits the stretch reflex in antagonistic pairs of muscles (Kent, 2006, p. 458). Both reflexes combined are used in a special form of proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF), called contract-relax-agonist-contract (CRAC) training, which appears extraordinarily effective for short-term training adaptions (Sharman et al., 2006). Furthermore, recent studies show that full ROM strength training results in physiological adaptions of muscles and fascias related to flexibility improvement (Baker et al., 2006; Csapo et al., 2011; Franchi et al., 2014; Reid & McNair, 2004). This physiological adaption is called serial (or longitudinal) hypertrophy. It counts as a long-term flexibility enhancement method. The training device presented in this work is designed to trigger all effects, described above. The isokinetic training mode was chosen to increase training effectiveness (Brown, 2000) and reduce the risk of injury as execution forces are solely determined by voluntary contraction, instead of specific resistance, which consequently decreases dangerous peak forces in certain unsupported joint angles. As stated above, a combination of all 4 methodical approaches is believed to result in superior adaptions of flexibility and strength, particularly if combined in one sports device for targeted semi-isolated training. Therefore, a sports device prototype, called Flexibility Trainer (FT) based on the concepts by Hoelbling (2016) was manufactured for testing.