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Effect of volitional preemptive abdominal contraction on superficial multifidus response in healthy subjects during
Luciano Garcia1, Alex Drusch1, Troy Hooper1
1Center for Rehabilitation Research, School of Health Professions, TTUHSC, Lubbock, TX, USA.
Objective:
To determine the effect of volitional preemptive abdominal contraction (VPAC) on abdominal and superficial multifidus (sMf) activation in healthy subjects during a lower extremity (LE) unipodal functional task.
Design:
Within-subjects, repeated measure cohort design.
Setting:
Clinical laboratory setting.
Participants:
30 healthy adults (18 female/12 male), age 20-41 years (26.4 ± 5.1 years), height (170.0 ± 8.5 cm), weight (71.0 ± 14.5 kg) and body mass index (25.0 ± 4.3 kg/m2).
Interventions:
The Y-balance test (YBT) on the dominant LE in anterior (ANT), posteromedial (PM), and posterolateral (PL) directions during No-VPAC, abdominal bracing maneuver (ABM), and abdominal drawing-in maneuver (ADIM) conditions.
Main Outcome Measures:
Superficial Mf (sMf), internal oblique (IO), and external oblique (EO) activity measured by surface electromyography.
Results:
One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) based on 2 (EO/IO) × 3 (VPAC Strategy) design revealed a significant VPAC strategy main effect for IO and EO amplitudes in all directions (p < .05). Post-hoc tests indicated that ABM and ADIM produced significantly greater abdominal contraction relative to No-VPAC. Findings yielded by repeated measures 2 (sMf side) × 3 (VPAC) ANOVAs indicate a significant interaction in PM (p = .002) and PL (p = .003) directions, with greater activation on stance-side sMf established via post-hoc comparisons (p < .001). Pearson correlation analyses failed to uncover any relationships between sMf activation and reach distances.
Conclusions:
Performing VPAC produces abdominal and stance-side sMf co-activation during PM and PL directed YBT performance. These outcomes give credence to the supportive role of abdominal-multifidus co-activation during unipodal functional reaching activities.
