ELECTROMYOGRAPHY PATTERNS CHANGES AT DIFFERENT CATEGORIES OF PROFESSIONAL SPORTSMEN

Abstract

Object of our paper was to study the electromyography activity at different categories of professional sportsmen (handball players and volleyball players),tocompare the obtained results and to emphasizedspecific electromyography patterns to each studied sports. Group of study was formed of 24 male professional sportsmen, 11 handball players and 13 volleyball sportsmen, with at least 6 years experience, in either one of the practiced sports, homogeneous regarding ages, heights and weights. Were recorded EMG to allathletes, together withmechanogram,during maximum isometric contractions of fingers flexors from both hands. Weused silver surface electrodes and the EMG BIOPAC MP 150 two channels device, with two active electrodes for each channel, the reference onebeing placed on forearm distal extremity, which was connected to a PC Pentium IV, whose program processed the data offered by BIOPAC system. To improve the interpretation of the obtained parameters, they were divided in 4 categories: of frequency, of mechanogram, of time and mixed and for each one of the parameters, were calculated other characteristic indexes. For most of the mechanogram parameters, handball players presented the highest values and the frequency parameters had superior values for volleyball players. So, the obtained EMG patterns were different, specific to the type of physical effort, that characterized each studied sports and proved to be an important contributor to sportive performances increasing, by helping the trainers to set adequate professional training programs for each athlete.

Keywords

• electromyography patterns
• professional sportsmen
• training programs
• physical effort