The study, conducted at the National Research Centre for the Working Environment in Copenhagen, Denmark, investigated the effects of resistance training on occupational muscle activity in 30 female office workers with chronic pain. The results were published in December in BioMed Research International.
“The increase in the number of individuals working in sedentary careers coupled with their time spent in front of a computer increases the time of static body postures and repetitive movements of the arm, shoulder and hands, which has been associated with the development of musculoskeletal disorders,” Lars L. Andersen, PhD, researcher with the center, said in a news release.
“This has both individual and social consequences as neck and shoulder pain has been show to increase the risk for long-term absence from work,” Andersen said in the release. “Females may be at higher risk due to the differences in work tasks, work techniques and possible lower muscle strength.”
The 30-participant study was part of a larger randomized control trial of 198 participants. That trial used TheraBand Elastic Tubing with handles for an exercise routine involving only one exercise for either two or 12 minutes, and participants were assigned randomly to either a nonexercising control group, a two-minute exercise group or a 12-minute exercise group. The exercise groups performed a lateral raise with the arm slightly in front of the body while using elastic tubing for resistance.
After 10 weeks, both exercise groups significantly reduced their neck or shoulder pain and tenderness and significantly increased their strength compared with the control group. There was no significant difference between the exercise groups.
For this smaller analysis, 15 of the workers participated in the daily two-minute training program and 15 in the control group received weekly e-mail information on general health. Researchers recorded electromyography from the splenius and upper trapezius muscles of each worker’s dominant side throughout the workday during the trial. The researchers were particularly interested in the mechanisms of pain reduction in the group performing a single set of exercises to failure within two minutes and the resulting EMG measurements. These time-consuming daily measurements were not possible within the larger trial.
After the 10-week program, the researchers concluded the single set of two-minute TheraBand exercise to failure could reduce pain and tenderness in female office workers with neck or shoulder pain. When ranking pain intensity on a scale of zero to 10, workers in the exercise group improved from an average 3.44 score at baseline to 2.04 by the end of the 10 weeks. Investigators also found the exercise group’s average isometric muscle strength improved by 6% at the end of the trial.
Compared with the control group, the training group showed a more relaxed muscle activity pattern in the splenius, with the number of EMG gaps increasing from 3.1 per minute to 12.3 per minute after the intervention.
Performance Health in Akron, Ohio, provided the elastic tubing for the study but did not contribute funding.
(Source: news.todayinpt.com)
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