Endurance of trunk muscles in persons with chronic low back pain: assessment, performance, training.

Trunk muscles are designed to fulfill their role of continuous activity throughout the day, but pain and inactivity alter muscles so that they fatigue in normal situations. Lack of endurance of the trunk muscles is an important factor in low back pain (LBP). This paper examines some methods to objectively test endurance of trunk flexor and extensor muscles in static and dynamic situations, and presents results of endurance testing in persons with chronic LBP compared to nonimpaired cohorts.

Some endurance measures in persons with chronic low back pain.

Muscle fatigue and lack of endurance are complaints of persons with chronic low back pain, but there are no standard ways to assess endurance in this population. The purposes of this study were to examine three measures of endurance; to determine relationships of these measures to each other; and to describe effects of gender, obesity, smoking, and self-reported fitness on the clinical measures. The measures of endurance selected were not dependent on maximal voluntary muscular contractions.

Distinguishable groups of musculoskeletal low back pain patients and asymptomatic control subjects based on physical measures of the NIOSH Low Back Atlas.

Study Design: The authors performed an empirical prospective study of 115 patients referred to physical therapy for low back pain and 112 control subjects of similar age and gender.

Objectives: The authors defined and compared subgroups based on physical tests and described demographic and psychosocial characteristics by group.

Summary Of Background Data: Prospective studies of intervention for persons with low back pain are limited by inability to randomize subjects into distinguishable groups.

Endurance training of trunk extensor muscles.

Background And Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of an endurance exercise protocol on the isometric holding time of the trunk extensor muscles (mechanical fatigue measure) and on the recorded median frequency (MF) measurements from the surface electromyogram (physiological fatigue measure).

Subjects: Twenty-eight healthy female volunteers were selected to participate in the study.

Methods: The subjects were stratified by activity level and then assigned to an exercise or a control group and tested at weeks 0, 3, and 6.