Does Exercise Type Affect Relative Activation Levels of Vastus Medialis Oblique and Vastus Laterialis?
Context:One factor believed to affect Patella tracking is an alteration in the timing of the contraction of the muscular stabilizers of the patella. The muscles responsible for this are Vastus Medialis Oblique (VMO) and Vastus Laterialis (VL). A number of authors believe that asynchronous recruitment of the VMO muscle occurs in patella mal-tracking, with the VL muscle firing first and VMO firing first with normal tracking. This has lead to a variety of exercise interventions to reverse the situation with varying success. The discrepancy between the majority of the available research findings and the clinical hypothesis of VMO action or facilitation of this action may in part be due to methodological variability between studies, especially lack of control of the exercise variables of angular velocity and relative load.Objective:To assess the effect of different quadriceps exercises on VMO and VL EMG recruitment timing, while controlling load and velocity of contraction.Design:Repeated measures.Setting:Biomechanics laboratory.Main Outcome Measures:Differences in time of onset of muscle activity between VMO and VL.Results:No significant difference existed between gender (P= 0.78). Analysis factorial ANOVA (muscle, contraction type and exercise type) showed the main effects of muscle (P= 0.15) and type of contraction (P= 0.79) did not have a significant effect, the nature of exercise (OKC or CKC) had a significant effect (P< 0.001). The interaction of muscle and exercise type (P= 0.34) also had a nonsignificant effect.Conclusions:Onset timing does not differ significantly between VMO and VL during a variety of exercise tasks.