Different strategies to compensate for the effects of fatigue revealed by neuromuscular adaptation processes in humans

An initially submaximal hopping task was maintained with the same global power output until it became the maximal performance; since there was no decrease in performance, any change in behavior occurring with fatigue characterizes the strategies allowing to compensate for the effects of fatigue. In a prolonged hopping task, fatigue is likely to be most prominent in the ankle extensor muscles since they are the main contributors to vertical propulsion in the hop. With fatigue, all subjects landed with more flexed knees and with an increased activity in the biarticular rectus femoris muscle indicating some compensation between the knee and ankle joint. Furthermore, two different strategies appeared to further compensate for the important fatigue of the ankle extensor muscles: one was organized across joints and consisted in a heavier reliance of the knee extensor vastus lateralis, and the other was organized within the fatigued joint and consisted in an earlier preactivation of the gastrocnemius. As a consequence, two different adaptations of the ground reaction force profiles appeared at the end of the session; each being related to one of these two strategies.