Effect of prolonged racing on muscle activity and spatiotemporal variables: double-poling technique.
Kitae Kim, Siddhartha Bikram Panday, In-Sik Shin and 3 others
PMID 28603377WHAT IT FOUND
Five elite skiers maintained similar pace in a 12-km double-pole roller-ski race, while triceps and lower-leg muscle signals showed fatigue-related changes, though additional checks did not confirm clear differences.
Key findings
01Lap times did not differ significantly, so the skiers kept a consistent pace across the race.
02Cycle time and cycle rate changed significantly across laps, while cycle length, push-time ratio, and mean velocity did not.
03Muscle activity measures showed significant differences for the triceps brachii, tibialis anterior, and gastrocnemius across laps, but post-hoc analysis did not identify significant differences.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study included only five male elite cross-country skiers, so it cannot be applied to female, recreational, injured, or clinical populations. The study design described here is a repeated measurement of five skiers during a race, so it does not test whether any treatment changes performance. Overall tests found significant differences for some variables, but post-hoc analysis did not find significant differences, so the lap-to-lap changes are unclear. The double-pole measurements were taken only in a 30-m flat area, where skiers were asked to perform at maximum capacity, while the race pace was maintained normally over 12 km. Three skiers were tested on the first day and two on the second day, with different average temperatures, so conditions were not uniform. The test used roller skis on a biathlon course, and the paper says application to actual cross-country skiing competitions is needed.
Declared interests
The authors report no conflict of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the muscle changes as proof that training the triceps brachii, tibialis anterior, or gastrocnemius improves performance. The study measured five elite skiers during a race, and the paper reports observations, not a tested training intervention.