Muscle Activation in Traditional and Experimental Barbell Bench Press Exercise: A Potential New Tool for Fitness Maintenance.

Background: The bench press exercise (BP) is commonly practiced in both recreational and professional training. The weight is lowered from a position where the elbows are at a 90° angle at the start and <90° at the end of eccentric phase, and then returned to the elbows extended position. In order to focus the exercise more on the triceps brachii (TB) rather than the pectoralis major (PM), the inter-handle distance (IHD) is decreased diminishing the involvement of the PM in favor of the TB.

Differential vulnerability of retinal layers to early age-related macular degeneration: evidence by SD-OCT segmentation analysis.

Purpose: We evaluated layer-by-layer retinal thickness in spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT), determined by automated segmentation analysis (ASA) software in healthy and early age-related maculopathy (ARM) eyes.

Methods: There were 57 eyes (specifically, 19 healthy eyes under 60 years old, 19 healthy eyes over 60, and 19 ARM eyes) recruited into this cross-sectional study. The mean ages were 36.