THE EFFECT OF SPLINTS ON PEAK STRENGTH, SUSTAINING TIME, AND TOTAL FORCE GENERATION AT DIFFERENT PINCHING TYPES

ABSTRACT

Present study intends to investigate the effects of wrist splints, pinch types (pulp 3, pulp 2, chuck, and lateral), and gender on pinching performance measured during a sustaining exertion, including maximal volitional contraction (MVC), maximal acceptable sustaining time (MAST), total force generation (TFG) over the MAST, and the normalized exertion level (NEL), defined as [TFG/(MASTxMVC)]x100. Twelve males and 12 females participated in this experiment, and a balanced nested-factorial design was employed. The ANOVA results indicate that the gender effect is significant in all areas but MAST, and this finding seems to imply that females exert less effectively and efficiently than males do. Pinch types affect all four responses significantly, and pinch types with higher MVC values have higher MAST, TFG, and NEL values as well; consequently, the two pinch types of chuck and lateral are recommended, but pulp 3 is not. Of interest, wearing splints did not affect all responses but significantly shortened the MAST value.

Keywords:

• maximal volitional contraction
• maximal acceptable sustained time
• splints
• pinch