Electromyographic changes of agonist and antagonist calf muscles during maximum isometric induced fatigue

The purpose of this study was to examine electromyographic changes of the agonist and antagonist muscles during fatigue. Nine healthy, untrained subjects exerted a maximum voluntary heel lifting contraction with their dominant limb. The EMG activity over the soleus and the tibialis anterior muscles was recorded during the contraction. The results showed that the torque output during heel lifting and the soleus EMG activity decreased, whereas the tibialis anterior EMG revealed a small but non-significant decrease. However, the ratio of the tibialis anterior to the soleus EMG increased significantly at the end of the fatigue protocol, a fact that reveals that the decrease rate of the antagonist's activity was significantly lower than the decrease rate of the agonist activity. It is concluded that during a maximal fatigue protocol, both the agonist and antagonist muscle activity may decline, however, the slower rate of antagonist's activity decrease relative to the agonist's activity is a finding that requires further investigation. This finding may reflect a higher level of agonist and antagonist muscle co-activation and probably a relatively higher opposing torque from the antagonist muscles at the end of the fatigue session.