Hip Muscle Recruitment During Weightbearing and Non-Weightbering Exercises

INTRODUCTION: Studies have suggested that hip strength is a modifiable risk factor for knee osteoarthritis. The purpose of this study was to examine the recruitment of hip musculature during various therapeutic exercises. PARTICIPANTS: Twenty healthy active volunteers between the ages of 18-25 years old participated in the study. METHODS: Surface EMG recorded the muscle activity of the gluteus maximus (GMax) and gluteus medius (GMed) as subjects performed three sets of five repetitions of the following exercises: (1) Forward Step-up, (2) Side Step-up, (3) 10 repetition maximum (RM) sidelying hip abduction and (4) 10 RM prone hip extension. The normalized peak EMG was determined during each repetition and then averaged across all trials. Using repeated measure ANOVAs, comparisons of the peak EMG activity were made between each exercise. Alpha was set at 0.05. RESULTS: Performing a 10 RM sidelying exercise recruited GMed significantly greater than remaining exercises (P