New look at force-frequency relationship of human skeletal muscle: effects of fatigue

A muscle does not have a unique force-frequency relationship; rather, it is dynamic and depends on the activation history of muscle. The purpose of this study was to investigate the force-frequency relationship of nonfatigued and fatigued skeletal muscle with the use of both catchlike-inducing trains (CITs) that exploited the catchlike property of skeletal muscle and constant-frequency trains (CFTs). Quadriceps femoris muscles were studied during isometric contractions in twelve healthy subjects (5 females, 7 males). Both the peak force and force-time integrals produced in response to each stimulation train were analyzed. Compared with nonfatigued muscles, higher frequencies of activation were needed to produce comparable normalized peak forces when the muscles were fatigued (i.e., a "rightward" shift in the force-frequency relationship) for both the CFTs and the CITs. When using the normalized force-time integral to measure muscle performance, the CFTs required slightly higher frequencies to produce comparable normalized forces from fatigued muscles, but the CITs did not. Furthermore, when the muscles were fatigued, the CITs produced greater peak forces and force-time integrals than all comparable CFTs with frequencies