Muscle Architecture and Exercise Performance: A Mini Review

Abstract

Muscle architecture is the physical arrangement of muscle fibers at the macroscopic level that determines a muscle's mechanical function. Previous studies have shown the existence of relationship between muscle architecture and performance and how training could alter the architecture of muscles (e.g. fascicle length, muscle thickness, pennation angle etc.). Among the types of training that have been investigated was resistance training in which has been shown to cause certain changes in muscle architecture. This mini review aims to briefly discuss how the muscle architecture has been studied in the field of sport/exercise performance. The existence of relationship between muscle architecture and performance and how training could alter the architecture of muscles (e.g. fascicle length, muscle thickness, pennation angle etc.) have been shown in several previous studies Blazevich [115], Duclay et al.[13], (Figure 1) showed the muscle architectures of vastuslateralis muscle. Muscle architecture have been found to be associated with running, squat movement and jumping performances Earp et al. [5]; Abe et al. [10], Study by Abe et al. [11] has found that trained sprinters had thicker and longer fascicles, and lesser pennation angles in the VL and the MG and LG compared to trained distance runners. In another study, 100-m sprinters with faster sprint times were shown to have greater muscle thickness at LG and smaller pennation angles at VL, MG, and LG compared to slower runners Kumagai et al.