Author's personal copy Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport 12 (2009) 500–502 Original paper Wearing a sports compression garment on the performance of visuomotor tracking following eccentric exercise: A pilot study Alan J. Pearce a,b,* , Dawson J. Kidgell c , Luke A. Grikepelis b , John S. Carlson a a Centre for Ageing, Rehabilitation, Exercise and Sport, Victoria University, Australia b School of Human Movement Recreation and Performance, Victoria University, Australia c School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Deakin University, Australia Received 11 January 2008; received in revised form 27 May 2008; accepted 2 June 2008 Abstract Clinical compression garments have been shown to improve functional control in patients with motor impairments, however, investigation in functional control has not been observed whilst wearing sports compression garments. This pilot study assessed motor control changes in the bicep brachii muscle following a bout of eccentric exercise designed to induce delayed onset muscle soreness for intervals up to 14 days after exercise. Eight male participants performed 35 maximal isokinetic eccentric extensions at 90 ◦ s -1 . Participants where then randomly divided into one of two groups to perform a one-dimensional elbow flexion/extension visuomotor tracking task; one group wore a sports compression garment during the task, the other acted as control (no garment). The group who wore the compression garment performed the tracking task significantly better immediately post-exercise, and at days 1, 2 and 3 post-exercise (p ≤ 0.05). Non-significant but large and moderate effects sizes (ES), in tracking, were found between the two groups on day 5 (ES = 1.3) and day 7 (ES = 0.7), respectively. Further research is necessary to elucidate these preliminary findings, however, the results suggest that the wearing of sports compression garments post-eccentric exercise has a positive effect on functional motor control. © 2008 Sports Medicine Australia. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Visuomotor; Compression garments; Eccentric exercise; Kinesis 1. Introduction Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) results from the execution of maximal eccentric exercise in human skeletal muscle. 1 Relative to other areas, research examining neu- romuscular control following eccentric exercise is scarce, however limited studies examining elbow flexors have shown a disruption of limb position sense 2,3 and the execution of a visuomotor skilled tracking task 4 following DOMS. Recently, the wearing of sports compression garments has increased during training and competition performance. Moreover, there have been anecdotal suggestions that pro- prioception can be improved through the wearing of sports compression garments, despite limited research to support these assertions. Therefore, the aims of this pilot study were to: (1) investigate time course changes in strength and visuo- * Corresponding author. E-mail address: alan.pearce@vu.edu.au (A.J. Pearce). motor tracking to confirm previous findings 4 ; (2) examine whether wearing a sports compression garment was able to assist in the performance of a visuomotor tracking task fol- lowing a bout of eccentric exercise, resulting in DOMS, at intervals up to 14 days post-exercise. 2. Methods Eight healthy male participants (23–37 years of age) pro- vided informed consent for the study, which was approved by the University Human Ethics Committee, conforming to the statement on human experimentation by the National Health and Medical Research Council. All participants were right handed as assessed by questionnaire. 5 The eccentric protocol to induce DOMS followed the method previously described by Pearce et al. 4 Participants performed 35 maximal voluntary eccentric contractions of the elbow flexors on an isokinetic dynamometer (Cybex, 1440-2440/$ – see front matter © 2008 Sports Medicine Australia. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jsams.2008.06.002