Long-Term Effect of Vibration Therapy for Training-Induced Muscle Fatigue in Elite Athletes

Purpose: To evaluate the long-term effect of vibration therapy with holistic and local intervention in treating muscle fatigue in elite athletes during their intensive training season. Methods: Study participants included five male athletes from a provincial Greco-Roman wrestling team who were qualified for the finals of China’s national games. During the study, conventional therapeutic intervention was applied during the initial three weeks of the study, and an instrument intervention was adopted in the following three weeks. A surface electromyography (sEMG) was used to measure muscle fatigue of latissimus dorsi, both before and after each intervention session. Specifically, the pre-intervention measurement was conducted right after the daily training completion; and the post-intervention measurement occurred in the following morning. The data analyses were to compare the differences in the muscle fatigue data between the two modes of interventions, conventional and instrument therapy. Results: The conventional intervention showed no significant difference in the sEMG indexes before and after the intervention; while for the instrument intervention, the pre- and post- intervention sEMG indexes differed significantly (p < 0.05). Conclusion: The long-term effects of instrument vibration therapy on muscle fatigue recovery were studied based on observational data from elite athletes. The results indicate that the vibration therapy with holistic and local consideration demonstrated an effective reduction of muscle fatigue and/or fatigue accumulation in elite athletes during their intensive training season.