Muscle damage of resistance-trained men after two bouts of eccentric bench press exercise

The present study tested the hypothesis that resistance-trained individuals would also show less muscle damage in the second than in the first eccentric exercise bout (i.e., repeated bout effect) as shown in untrained individuals. This study investigated changes in indirect markers of muscle damage after 2 bouts of free weight eccentric exercise performed by 8 resistance-trained men. The participants (24.4 ± 1.2 years) performed 4 sets of 8 eccentric actions (3 seconds for each repetition) at 70% of eccentric 1 repetition maximum (1RM) load in a bench press exercise with 2 minutes of rest between sets, and repeated the same exercise 2 weeks later. Bench press 1RM, delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) assessed by a 6-point Likert scale, serum creatine kinase (CK) activity, and plasma prostaglandin E2 concentration (PGE2) were measured before and 24, 48, 72, and 96 hours after the exercise, and the changes were compared between bouts. The changes in the variables were smaller (p ≤ 0.05) after the second than the first bout indicated by a smaller decline in 1RM strength (first bout: -10.2 ± 1.0% vs. second bout: -5.7 ± 1.5%), peak DOMS (3.8 ± 0.4 vs. 1.7 ± 0.5), peak CK (637.3 ± 133.3 vs. 305.4 ± 63.6 IU·L), and peak PGE2 (761.2 ± 171.0 vs. 307.2 ± 48.3 pg·mL). These results show a typical repeated bout effect. Thus, it is concluded that the repeated bout effect occurs in resistance-trained individuals.