Objective: The aim of this study was to compare the effects of verbal, tactile-verbal, and visual feedback on muscle activation of the lumbar stabilizers relative to extremity movers during an abdominal drawing-in maneuver when feedback is withheld.
Methods: This quasi-experimental study equally divided 54 healthy adults into 3 feedback groups (verbal, tactile-verbal, and visual) who trained twice per week over a 4-week period to perform supine abdominal drawing-in maneuvers. The percentage of maximum voluntary isometric contraction of rectus abdominis, multifidus (MF), erector spinae, and hamstrings (HS) as an outcome measure was acquired using surface electromyography. A 2-way factorial analysis of variance with bootstrapping allowed for comparison of post-pre difference scores across the interaction of feedback and muscle groups.
Results: Hamstring activation decreased in those receiving tactile-verbal feedback relative to an increase in participants given visual feedback. Furthermore, when using verbal feedback, HS activity increased relative to a decline in rectus abdominis, and when presenting visual feedback, HS activity increased relative to a decrease in MF. However, no post-pre changes were seen across muscles with tactile-verbal feedback.
Conclusion: Although tactile-verbal feedback did not increase MF recruitment, it produced less HS activity than visual feedback. Undesirable HS recruitment may reflect boredom or feedback dependency.
This abstract is reproduced with the permission of the publisher; full text is available by subscription. Click on the above link and select a publisher from PubMed's LinkOut feature.
