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CORE ACTIVATION THROUGH THE MEASUREMENT OF TRADITIONAL VS. NON-TRADITIONAL CORE EXERCISES

Abstract

Chris Couch, Erica Stilwell and Taylor Moran

Ouachita Baptist University, Arkadelphia, Arkansas

Athletic trainers at the collegiate level have a responsibility to their athletes to prepare them in core endurance and strength for their specific needs. The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of muscle fiber recruitment between traditional core exercises and non-traditional core exercises measured by an electromyography (EMG) machine in different vital core muscles. Twenty-four college students participated and were randomly sorted into two exercise groups, traditional or non-traditional. The traditional core exercise group performed ten bicycle crunches while the non-traditional core exercise group performed ten stability ball passes for each trial recorded. The participants wore four EMG electrodes on two regions of their abdomen to capture their muscle fiber recruitment while performing the exercise. The EMG electrodes were placed on the upper rectus abdominis and the external obliques. The study was completed over a series of four weeks. Four paired T-tests were performed to obtain p-values to evaluate the significance of change in muscle fiber recruitment over the course of the study. Significance was set at a P-value of p>0.05.The traditional groups external obliques resulted in a p-value of 0.0215 and a mean difference of 17.05, nontraditional groups external obliques resulted in a p-value of 0.0540 with a mean difference of 11.334, traditional groups rectus abdominis resulted in a p-value of 0.113 with a mean difference of 15.417, and the nontraditional groups rectus abdominis resulted in a p-value of 0.181 with a mean difference of 8.125. It was concluded that there was a significant difference in the rectus abdominis muscle motor unit recruitment in both the traditional and nontraditional group exercise, with a higher significance in the traditional group exercise.

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