Limitations
muscle injuries, fatigue, EIMD, muscle damage, muscle fatigue
INFLAMMATORY RESPONSE
This study was not free of limitations. It should be noted that the results of the present study are based on indirect damage markers, which are associated with increased vulnerability to muscle damage, but do not optimally reflect the actual impact muscle fatigue might have on muscle injuries, i.e., fiber tears. A major limitation of this study is that we did not assess residual fatigue prior to the damage protocol. Further, the RF/ECC group had already completed the fatigue protocols before their pretest. This was done for the following reasons: First, we wanted to achieve an equal distribution of measurement time points between all groups and ensure the same number of measurements. Second, we wanted to investigate to what extent the fatigue training changed the baseline conditions for the RF/ECC group and thus, possibly led to an altered response to EIMD. Concentric-only residual fatigue did not influence EIMD in this study and is likely related to the fact that we did not include eccentric components to mitigate the repeated bout effect. In addition, we did not assess whether the participants of this study took nutrition supplements that might impact the inflammatory response to EIMD and subsequent performance measures. Future studies should aim to investigate the influence of different fatigue protocols to gain a better understanding on how residual fatigue might affect EIMD. Furthermore, this study had strict inclusion criteria, making the results difficult to apply to other populations, e.g., women.