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Non-local Muscle Fatigue Effects on Muscle Strength, Power, and Endurance in Healthy Individuals: A Systematic Review with Meta-analysis

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Abstract

Background

The fatigue of a muscle or muscle group can produce global responses to a variety of systems (i.e., cardiovascular, endocrine, and others). There are also reported strength and endurance impairments of non-exercised muscles following the fatigue of another muscle; however, the literature is inconsistent.

Objective

To examine whether non-local muscle fatigue (NLMF) occurs following the performance of a fatiguing bout of exercise of a different muscle(s).

Design

Systematic review and meta-analysis.

Search and Inclusion

A systematic literature search using a Boolean search strategy was conducted with PubMed, SPORTDiscus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar in April 2020, and was supplemented with additional ‘snowballing’ searches up to September 2020. To be included in our analysis, studies had to include at least one intentional performance measure (i.e., strength, endurance, or power), which if reduced could be considered evidence of muscle fatigue, and also had to include the implementation of a fatiguing protocol to a location (i.e., limb or limbs) that differed to those for which performance was measured. We excluded studies that measured only mechanistic variables such as electromyographic activity, or spinal/supraspinal excitability. After search and screening, 52 studies were eligible for inclusion including 57 groups of participants (median sample = 11) and a total of 303 participants.

Results

The main multilevel meta-analysis model including all effects sizes (278 across 50 clusters [median = 4, range = 1 to 18 effects per cluster) revealed a trivial point estimate with high precision for the interval estimate [− 0.02 (95% CIs = − 0.14 to 0.09)], yet with substantial heterogeneity (Q(277) = 642.3, p < 0.01), I2 = 67.4%). Subgroup and meta-regression analyses showed that NLMF effects were not moderated by study design (between vs. within-participant), homologous vs. heterologous effects, upper or lower body effects, participant training status, sex, age, the time of post-fatigue protocol measurement, or the severity of the fatigue protocol. However, there did appear to be an effect of type of outcome measure where both strength [0.11 (95% CIs = 0.01–0.21)] and power outcomes had trivial effects [− 0.01 (95% CIs = − 0.24 to 0.22)], whereas endurance outcomes showed moderate albeit imprecise effects [− 0.54 (95% CIs = − 0.95 to − 0.14)].

Conclusions

Overall, the findings do not support the existence of a general NLMF effect; however, when examining specific types of performance outcomes, there may be an effect specifically upon endurance-based outcomes (i.e., time to task failure). However, there are relatively fewer studies that have examined endurance effects or mechanisms explaining this possible effect, in addition to fewer studies including women or younger and older participants, and considering causal effects of prior training history through the use of longitudinal intervention study designs. Thus, it seems pertinent that future research on NLMF effects should be redirected towards these still relatively unexplored areas.

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Data Availability Statement

All data are available in the Open Science Framework by accessing: https://osf.io/cs9e2/.

Notes

  1. Within-participant designs are typically more statistically powerful (see [19]).

  2. It seemed reasonable to think that performance measurements taken soon after a non-local fatiguing protocol would exhibit greater deficits, and similarly that more severe fatigue protocols would elicit greater deficits.

  3. The term ‘power’ is commonly misused in sport, exercise, and physical activity literature considering its specific definition in Newtonian mechanics; instead, it would be more accurate to speak of the ability to generate impulse in most applications where it is used (see [21]). Indeed, power is defined as the rate of performing work. However, with respect to muscular performance, ‘power’ is often thought of as the product of force and velocity which as Winter et al. [21] note in fact refers to the impulse as derived from the impulse–momentum relationship. However, given its wide colloquial use to refer to such applications, we continue to use the term ‘power’ here for ease of communication given the primary intention of this article is not to debate terminology.

  4. This in essence was similar to the manner in which resistance training dose is often operationalised as ‘volume-load’ relative to one-repetition maximum (1RM), i.e., sets x repetitions x %1RM [25].

  5. Given that the number of possible combinations (2.146988965623700007512297816 × 1027) based on the number of effect sizes extracted prohibited the computation of all possible overall effect estimates, we limited this to a random sample of 1,000,000 possible combinations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Human Kinetics and Recreation, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, Canada

    David G. Behm, Shahab Alizadeh, Saman Hadjizedah Anvar, Courtney Hanlon, Emma Ramsay, Mohamed Mamdouh Ibrahim Mahmoud & Joseph Whitten

  2. University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

    Saman Hadjizedah Anvar

  3. School of Sport, Health and Social Science, Solent University, Southampton, UK

    James P. Fisher & James Steele

  4. Division of Exercise and Movement, University of Applied Sciences for Sport and Management Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

    Olaf Prieske

  5. Division of Training and Movement Science, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

    Helmi Chaabene & Urs Granacher

  6. Ukactive Research Institute, London, UK

    James Steele

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  1. David G. Behm
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  2. Shahab Alizadeh
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Contributions

DB wrote the first draft of the manuscript. DB, SHA, CH, ER, and MMIM performed the literature search. JS performed the meta-analyses. All authors were involved in the interpretation of the meta-analyses, read, revised, and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to David G. Behm.

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Funding

Partial financial support for graduate students (ER, MMIM, and JW) was received from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Conflict of Interest

David Behm, Shahab Alizadeh, Saman Hadjizedah Anvar, Courtney Hanlon, Emma Ramsay, Mohamed Mamdouh Ibrahim Mahmoud, Joseph Whitten, James Fisher, Olaf Prieske, Helmi Chaabene, Urs Granacher, and James Steele declare that they have no conflicts of interest relevant to the content of this review.

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Behm, D.G., Alizadeh, S., Hadjizedah Anvar, S. et al. Non-local Muscle Fatigue Effects on Muscle Strength, Power, and Endurance in Healthy Individuals: A Systematic Review with Meta-analysis. Sports Med 51, 1893–1907 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-021-01456-3

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