Lifting Loads on Unstable Platforms - A Supplementary View on Stabilizer Muscles and Terminological Issues

Many open motor skills, for example in team sports and combat sports, are executed under mild to severe conditions of instability. Therefore, over the past two decades, coaching professionals and athletes have shown increasing interest in training routines to enhance the physical prerequisites for strength performance in this regard. Exercise scientists have identified instability resistance training as a possible means to improve strength performance under conditions of instability with a special emphasis on the core muscles. In this letter article, more specifically, we firstly argue that effects of resistance training may be found not only in the core muscles but in the stabilizer muscles in general. Moreover, specific testing procedures are needed to assess strength performance under instability as compared to stable testing. As a second issue of this letter article, we consider instability to be an inappropriate term to characterize mild to moderate equilibrium disturbances during competition and exercise. Instead, when conceptualizing the human body as a dynamic system, metastability appears to better suit the conditions of strength performance on slippery surfaces, waves, during gusts of wind or tackling opponents for example. In fact, this term is conventionally used to characterize other dynamic systems in thermodynamics, financial markets, climatology, and social groups for instance. In the recent past, metastability has been discussed for issues in motor control as well. Hence, we argue that metastability idea should be applied to exercise science as well when assigning the biomechanical equilibrium conditions during perturbed strength performance. INTRODUCTION On many occasions in sports, athletes, when executing motor skills, can experience balance disturbances such as when tackling opponents in team sports and combat sports, cutting maneuvers, slippery turf, strong winds or waves, for example when surfing on a board, or when managing moguls in alpine skiing. During the past two decades, corresponding training methods have evolved and denoted as instability strength or resistance training (IRT) [1 5]. Exercises have been suggested to lift loads or perform jumps on unstable platforms such as wobble boards, inflatable rubber discs, or bosu balls [1, 6]. In addition, more recently, muscle activities have been examined during instability lifting exercises with unstable loads (for example: weights suspended from a parallel bar by an elastic band [7] or plastic pipes with liquids [8]. Unfortunately, so far, inconsistent results were provided for any clear superiority of IRT over traditional resistance training [5]. Aside from possible similarities in the physiological adaptations, the reasons for this uncertainty may be related to a lack of specific knowledge on the neuromuscular activation in the primary movers and the stabilizer muscles during instability exercises as well. In addition, a general misconception of the instability notion and a possible mismatch of training and testing procedures may have obscured the clear understanding of existent results. It is the aim of this letter article to forward a supplementary view by analyzing the literature towards specific muscle activation differences in the primary movers and the stabilizers during instability strength exercises. Further, we argue that instability is an inappropriate term to characterize mild to moderate equilibrium disturbances during competition and exercise. A metastability approach to conceptualize human motor behavior during ongoing variations in mechanical equilibrium is forwarded and supplementary conclusions on training and assessment are derived. * Address correspondence to this author at the Institute for Sports and Sport Science, University of Kassel, Damaschkestrasse 25, D-34121 Kassel, Germany; Tel: + 45 561804 5357; E-mail: akibele@uni-kassel.de Lifting Loads on Unstable Platforms The Open Sports Sciences Journal, 2017, Volume 10 115 INSTABILITY STRENGTH EXERCISES In the past, authors have attributed the benefits of IRT to strengthening of the core [2, 9, 10] as a key factor in athletic performance and injury prevention [6, 11 15]. In particular, it has been the core muscles with stabilizing and force transducing functions within kinetic chains, for example during throws and jumps, which have been considered [10, 13]. However, little attention has been paid to the distinction between primary movers and stabilizer muscles in this regard. From a theoretical view point, strength training effects have been traditionally categorized by either muscle hypertrophy or improved neuromuscular activation [16, 17]. Depending on their line of action in respect to the overall movement direction and on the co-activation of their antagonists, activated muscles may be roughly categorized as stabilizers or primary movers. Whilst, specific results on any muscle hypertrophy effects of IRT in the stabilizers and the primary movers are amiss [5] neural adaptations through IRT appear to be more plausible for both categories. For example, muscle activation studies for the primary movers (e.g., m. pectoralis m. or m. triceps br.) during barbell chest presses on stable versus unstable support platforms showed either no differences (e.g., swiss balls vs. bench) [18 21] or lower degrees of muscle activation [8, 22, 23]. Similar results were found in the leg extensor muscles (for example: m. quadriceps fem.) during squatting exercises or plyometric jumps on unstable platform supports (e.g., wobble boards or inflatable dyna discs). While some researchers found lower muscle activation in the primary movers during unstable exercises [24], others did not find any differences [7, 21, 25, 26]. Reductions in the muscle activation levels for the leg extensors were also reported for vertical jumps and drop jumps on unstable vs. stable platform supports [27]. In contrast, stabilizer muscles (e.g., m. rectus abdominis, m. obliquus externus abdominis, m. erector spinae, or m. soleus) showed higher activation levels during unstable as compared to stable exercise modes in both barbell chest press exercises [8, 20, 22, 23, 28 30] and squatting tasks [7, 21, 24], and for postural balance tasks [31]. Stabilizer muscles are considered to contribute to joint stiffening through co-contractions while showing an early activation onset in response to perturbation using feed-forward and/or feedback control processes [32]. In addition, larger muscle activation levels in the primary movers were also reported for instability exercises with dumbbells as compared to barbell exercises, with the latter less demanding in regards to postural stability [33]. In summary, studies in the literature show a smaller, or at best similar, neuromuscular activation in the primary movers for chest presses and squatting exercises on unstable as compared to stable platforms. The opposite is true for the stabilizer muscles. Here, all in all, larger muscle activities are detected when exercising under unstable vs. stable conditions while it did not matter whether unstable platforms or unstable loads were used [7, 8]. Therefore, IRT appears to provide a better adaptation stimulus for the stabilizer muscles than for the primary movers [34]. In addition, instability exercises appear to be better suited for a weight loss program as the total energy cost was found to be significantly larger when exercising on unstable platforms [35]. Consequently, IRT may be considered as a useful tool to promote stabilizer strength. Furthermore, misconceptions should be eliminated such that IRT is an additional rather than a competing alternative to traditional strength training regimens [19, 20, 36 38]. In turn, IRT does not provide a suitable muscle adaptation stimulus for the primary movers. Instead, stable exercise conditions with maximal loads are required to provide changes in the neuromuscular activation pattern of the primary movers [16, 17]. A further point deserves notice. In the past, most studies on instability strength performance have used bench press exercises when lying prone on swiss balls, or squatting exercises on wobble boards or dyna discs, while aiming for a strengthening of the core [see reviews by 1, 2, 5, 39]. Here, primary movers of the trunk and the leg muscles and trunk stabilizers were analyzed. However, studies on the hip stabilizers (for example: adductor and abductor muscles) are hardly known in the literature on IRT. While a tendency for larger muscle activations in the gluteus medius was found for unstable versus stable stance conditions [40], it is yet unclear whether and how the hip stabilizer muscles will change their activation pattern from stable to unstable support conditions during leg extension tasks with loads. However, hip stabilizer strength and adductor-to-abductor strength ratio have been identified as suitable indicators for the risk of groin injuries, for example, in soccer players and hockey players [41 48]. As a conclusion, it is therefore important to relate IRT not only to the anatomical core [2] but to stabilizer muscles in general. A METASTABILITY APPROACH TO HUMAN MOTOR BEHAVIOR So far, the IRT has been suggested to prepare the athlete for balance disturbances encountered during competition. However, instability may not be an appropriate term to capture ongoing variations in the body equilibrium. 116 The Open Sports Sciences Journal, 2017, Volume 10 Armin Kibele Equilibrium typically describes the state of a body that is not changing its speed or direction when all forces acting on it are completely balanced. Traditionally, three typical states of equilibrium are distinguished by their responsive behavior to perturbations [49]. When in stable equilibrium, systems will return to their original location if displaced. In turn, systems are in a state of unstable equilibrium when they do not return to their original location contingent to even the slightest displacements