The effect of progressive endurance-strengthening training and electrical stimulation on muscle strength and surface electromyography parameters in volleyball players with Infraspinatus syndrome

Background: In sports such as handball, tennis and volleyball the player need to involve the great loads over his shoulders. In these sports, players are predisposed to overuse injuries. Infraspinatus syndrome’s meaning is the painless weakness and atrophy of this muscle that observe following Suprascapularis nerve neuropathy. In this investigation we want to survey the effects of a short term of progressive endurance-strengthening training and electrical stimulation on strength and electromyography in infraspinatus muscle. Method: 12 volleyball players with Infraspinatus syndrome were randomly divided to two groups: progressive endurance-strengthening training (6 persons, age 24/8±3/8, height 189/3±2/6, weight 83/8±7/9, sport background 9/4±2/5 and national team’s background 3/24±1/7) and electrical stimulation (6 persons, age 24/2±4/5, height 192/5±1/5, weight 86/2±6/4, sport background 8/5±4 and national team’s background 4/3±2/8). 20 persons of healthy players were considered to be as a control group (age 25/1±4/2, height 187/7±3/9, weight 75/6±7/1, sport history 9±3/8 and national team history 3/9±2/3), too. Therapeutic interventions performed for 8 weeks. Surface electromyography of infraspinatus and tress minor muscles and maximal isometric strength of external rotator muscles were measured before and after interventions. Data analyzing performed by SPSS.12 and we used of Paired sample T test and one-way ANOVA. Confidence level considered to be 95% (P<0.05). Results: After eight weeks, maximal isometric strength of external rotators in both experimental groups was increased significantly, but there were observed no significant changes in IEMG and RMSEMG. Conclusion: Progressive endurance-strengthening training and electrical stimulation can result in increase of maximal isometric strength of shoulder external rotator muscles. But both therapeutic methods have no effect onelectromyograghic parameters in infraspinatus and tress minor muscles. It seems that we can't use of surface electromyography for detecting the effect of these protocols on above muscles (P<0/05).