EARLY MUSCLE SORENESS AND STIFFNESS OF ATHLTES AFTER TRAINING / 中国运动医学杂志

ABSTRACT

The muscle tonus of 7 (43 trials) swimmers were measured by the side of theswimming pool before and after training when they felt muscle stiffness and sore-ness. The muscle tonus and EMG of 10 (20 trails) swimmers and 5 (10 trails) runnrswere also measured and taken in the laboratory when they had a pain in the muscleafter training. The results showed that after training the muscle tonus was significantly higherthan before and the athletes had muscle stiffness and soreness. After stretching,not only the muscle tonus decreased, the athletes also felt better. The amplitude of the EMG appeared higher in the first stretching. then it be-came lower and lower with the stretching even showed electric silence. At the sametime, the muscle tonus decreased and the soreness was relieved. This study suggested that the early muscle soreness and stiffness are not cau-sed by local tissue edema, which is thought to be due to biochemical end-productsof metabolism, especially lactic acid. If muscle soreness and stiffness after vigo-rous exercises are the result of tissue edema, they can not be readily relieved byway of stretching technique since the water causing tissue edema cannot be remo-ved from the muscle tissue to the circulation in only about 30 seconds. Therefore, in our opinion, the early muscle soreness and stiffness are not cau-sed by biochemical but by physiological reasons, i. e. the physiological reflex spasmrelated with the functional state of the muscle spindle sensing system. Of course.this still needs to be confirmed by more extensive study in the future.