background: the comparison between voluntary and automatic contraction of deep abdominal muscles in patients with nonspecific low back pain (nlbp) may justify being the best treat for them. the aim of this case-controlled study was to compare changes in the thickness of the transverses abdomin is (tra) and internal oblique (io) muscles during the abdominal drawing-in maneuver (adim) and the act...

The role of respiratory muscles in acute changes of circulation and ventilation due to acetylcholine in anaesthetized spontaneously breathing rabbits was investigated. Significant increase of end-expiratory thoracic circumference and insignificant increase of abdominal one was found and was taken as a measure of changed respiratory muscles tone. The authors emphasize the important role of the r...

Purpose: The present research evaluated the effect of using a back brace for 8 weeks on the Electromyography (EMG) activity of the selected muscles among individuals with chronic back pain in the mid-stance phase of walking. Methods: This quasi-experimental research evaluated 22 women with chronic back pain in terms of erector spinae muscles activity, abdominal erectus, abdominal external obli...

PURPOSE We evaluated trunk muscle recruitment in abdominal and back exercises with magnetic resonance (MR) diffusion-weighted imaging. METHODS Twelve men performed bent-knee sit-up, crunch, trunk lateral flexion, and trunk extension exercises. We obtained axial diffusion-weighted images of the trunk before and after each exercise using a 1.5-tesla MR system, calculated apparent diffusion coef...

Adequate training of the trunk muscles is essential to prevent low back pain. Although sit-ups are simple to perform, the perceived high effort is the reason why training the abdominal muscles is seldom continued over a longer period of time. It is well known that the abdominal muscles are inferior to the back muscles in terms of force, but this cannot explain the extreme difference in perceive...