The use of electromyography for the assessment of sense of muscular effort: a test–retest reliability study

Abstract

This study sought to examine the test–retest reliability to measure sense of muscular effort with electromyography (EMG). The EMG activity of the tibialis anterior muscle from 23 participants was recorded. Targets of EMG amplitudes produced at 10 and 20% of the maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) were calculated. Participants matched the target EMG level with and without visual feedback (FB). With NFB, the reliability was good to excellent when errors were represented as the average standard deviation (SD) of the error from the target (ICC_1,2 = 0.75 and 0.69 for 10 and 20% targets, respectively). Also, reliability was good when errors were presented as the average SD as a percentage of the MVC EMG (intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC_1,2) = 0.67 and 0.66, respectively, for 10 and 20% targets). Standard deviation around the target was the most reliable method to represent the error. This approach could be used as a simple cost-effective method to assess the sense of muscular effort.

Keywords:

• Electromyography
• sense of effort
• sense of force
• proprioception
• reliability
• ankle