Dr Mel Siff Blog

With the great amount of attention currently being paid to the testing and
training of balance, this abstract may be of interest.

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Burke Gurney, James Milani & Marybeth E Pedersen
ROLE OF FATIGUE ON PROPRIOCEPTION OF THE ANKLE
J of Exerc Physiol online, Journal of The Amer Soc of Exercise Physiologists
Vol 3 No 1 January 2000

Proprioception comprises of sensory input from several sources including
skin, joint capsule/ligaments, and muscle spindles. It remains unclear to
what degree each component contributes to the overall proprioceptive picture.
If the muscle spindle plays a leading role as currently thought, then muscle
fatigue might yield a declination in proprioceptive awareness. The purpose of
this study was to examine the role fatigue plays in altering joint
repositioning sense in the ankle. Eighty-five (age mean=39.2, range=19-77
yrs) non-impaired subjects were asked to recognize a pre-determined position
of plantarflexion both with and without exercise to fatigue. Order of
exercise/non-exercise was randomly assigned. The average of the absolute
value deviations from the target position of three trials were recorded as
scores for both fatigue and non-fatigue conditions and treated as repeated
measures.

There was no significant difference in subject’s ability to recognize passive
repositioning of their ankle with and without fatigue. Muscle fatigue does
not seem to play a part in joint repositioning in the ankle. The
inconsistency of these results with other findings using similar protocols in
the shoulder and knee are discussed.

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Dr Mel C Siff

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