Laurie's Blogs.

Last week we talked about (and you watched videos on) whole body vibration.  That was a nice little addition to the 3-part Vibration Platform video series I had for Four Leg members.  This week, I came upon a paper on localized vibration for muscle strength.

Alghadir, A.H. et al.  Effect of localised vibration on muscle strength in healthy adults: a systematic review. Physiotherapy , 2018, 104(1): 18 – 24.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28947078

Essentially, they looked at papers that used localized vibration (not whole body) where the researcher measured muscle strength as the outcome.  This review team found 11 papers.

As you can imagine (as with any review paper), the training protocols were all over the map!  The vibration frequency ranged from 8Hz to 300Hz.  Exposure to vibration was anywhere from 6 seconds to 30 minutes.  In nine of the studies, strength was measured before and after vibration stimulation and in the remaining two studies, muscle strength was tested during vibration in the experimental group with no vibration stimulation in the control group.

This review found that eight of the 11 included studies used a vibration frequency between 8 and 38 Hz.  For acute effects, most of the included studies applied a single application of vibration treatment whereas for chronic effects, vibration was applied for 4 weeks.  In most of the studies, vibration application time was up to 10 minutes.

As most of the studies involved untrained or moderately trained healthy adults, the effect of local vibration on muscle strength appears to be most advantageous for these populations.

Outcomes:  Most of the studies reported a significant improvement in muscle strength

following vibration training. In addition, application of local vibration along with existing muscle strength training protocols may further enhance the effect of the training programme.

So, this is likely a simple addition to some of your therapeutic exercise protocols.  Add vibration to your 3-Leg stands, or sit to stand exercises, or to the abdominals during a planking exercise!  Cheap, easy, & effective!  

Check out this wee video I did with a 1-week post-op extracapsular repair patient.