KNEE JOINT TORQUE MEASUREMENTS BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER TRAINING WITH ELECTRICAL STIMULATION

The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of an eight-week Electrical Stimulation (ES) training program on the knee joint torque of the knee joint extensor muscles of six test persons (three trained hobby sportsmen ‘T ES ’ and three untrained test persons ‘UT ES’). ES sessions were carried out with simultaneous maximum voluntary isometric contraction five times weekly. A control group of six test persons (three ‘T NoES ’ and three ‘UT NoES’) completed the same training program without ES. Every two weeks measurements on a dynamometer were done before, during and after training sessions. The averaged strength increase of the ‘UT ES’-group amounted to 9.5 % and of the ‘T ES’-group to 5.7 % at the knee joint flexion angle of 60°. The ‘UT NoES’-group achieved 9.1 % at the same knee joint flexion angle. KEY WORDS: electrical stimulation, knee joint dynamometer, knee joint torque INTRODUCTION: The physiological experiments of Galvani who made frog muscles contract with the aid of contact current around 1791 are generally known. However in the year of 420 before Christ Hippocrates already treated asthma with electrical strokes (ES!) of the torpedo-fish. Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) has been employed with spinal cord injury subject