Relationship between muscle metabolic rate and muscle torque complexity during fatiguing intermittent isometric contractions in humans
Abstract
To test the hypothesis that a system's metabolic rate and the complexity of fluctuations in the output of that system are related, thirteen healthy participants performed intermittent isometric knee extensor contractions at intensities where a rise in metabolic rate would (40% maximal voluntary contraction, MVC) and would not (20% MVC) be expected. The contractions had a 60% duty factor (6 sec contraction, 4 sec rest) and were performed until task failure or for 30 min, whichever occurred sooner. Torque and surface EMG signals were sampled continuously. Complexity and fractal scaling of torque were quantified using approximate entropy (ApEn) and the detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) α scaling exponent. Muscle metabolic rate was determined using near-infrared spectroscopy. At 40% MVC, task failure occurred after (mean ± SD) 11.5 ± 5.2 min, whereas all participants completed 30 min of contractions at 20% MVC. Muscle metabolic rate increased significantly after 2 min at 40% MVC (2.70 ± 1.48 to 4.04 ± 1.23 %·s-1 , P < 0.001), but not at 20% MVC. Similarly, complexity decreased significantly at 40% MVC (ApEn, 0.53 ± 0.19 to 0.15 ± 0.09; DFA α, 1.37 ± 0.08 to 1.60 ± 0.09; both P < 0.001), but not at 20% MVC. The rates of change of torque complexity and muscle metabolic rate at 40% MVC were significantly correlated (ApEn, ρ = -0.63, P = 0.022; DFA, ρ = 0.58, P = 0.037). This study demonstrated that an inverse relationship exists between muscle torque complexity and metabolic rate during high-intensity contractions.Citation
Pethick, J., Winter, S.L. and Burnely, M. (2019) Relationship between muscle metabolic rate and muscle torque complexity during fatiguing intermittent isometric contractions in humans. Physiological reports, 7 (18), e14240, https://doi.org/10.14814/phy2.14240Publisher
WileyJournal
Physiological reportsPubMed ID
31552708 (pubmed)Additional Links
https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.14814/phy2.14240Type
Journal articleLanguage
enDescription
© 2021 The Authors. Published by Wiley. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.14814/phy2.14240ISSN
2051-817XEISSN
2051-817XSponsors
This work was supported by a Research Project Grant from The Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2016-440).ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.14814/phy2.14240
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Licence for published version: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International