Electromyography (EMG) for assessment in low back pain; erector spinae muscle

The purpose of electromyography (EMG) study is to identify which position of surface EMG sensor attached to erector spinae muscle related with lower back pain by squat and stoop lifting technique. This is to avoid lower back pain (LBP) occur during Manual Materials Handling (MMH). There are only one types of upper extremity muscle were chosen to be monitored in this study which is erector spinae (ES) muscle with different electrodes placement on the surface electromyography (sEMG) sensor. However, each of the lifting styles come out with the different reading of root mean square (RMS) frequency for each muscle chosen. In this study, the two subjects consist of two females with normal body mass index (BMI) range from 18.5 to 24.9 with same physical measurement, was selected in order to perform both styles of lifting which are squatting and stooping. For every session the subject will undertake 15 repetitions with 15 minutes rest in between for each movement. In furtherance of to get the analysis muscle activity, proEMG software is used. The results of study for subject female 1 showed that the squat technique had higher levels of muscle activation compared to stoop technique on left erector spinae (LES) muscle. However, the LES muscle activation for subject 2 is greater at stoop activity. On the contrary, squat technique had lower fatigue analysis compared to stoop technique for both subjects on LES muscle. Conclusion, squat technique is better than stoop technique but stoop lift is more natural and spontaneously used for MMH