Comparison of Modular Control during Side Cutting before and after Fatigue

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to clarify the coordination between the trunk and lower limb muscles during sidestep and to compare this coordination before and after fatigue intervention. The intervention was lateral jump until exhaustion. Nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) was used to extract muscle synergies from electromyography. Subsequently, to compare the muscle synergies, a scalar product that evaluates the coincidence of synergies was calculated. Three muscle synergies were extracted before and after the intervention from the NMF analysis. In accordance with the evaluation of the scalar product, these synergies were the same before and after the intervention. One of these synergies that engaged the internal oblique/transversus abdominis, rectus femoris, and adductor muscle was activated from before landing to midstance during sidestep motion; therefore, this synergy is thought to suppress excessive hip abduction. However, the activation timing of this synergy was delayed after the intervention ($P=0.028$, effect size: 0.54, Wilcoxon test). This delay is considered to decrease hip stability. Thus, this change may induce a reduction in hip control function.