Overall responses to muscle damage
muscle damage, fatigue, ’
As nearly all dependent variables (except DThe AF/ECC group amounted significantly less total work (6836.2 ± 1.453.3 J) during their damage session than the ECC (9292.6 ± 1114.9 J, The current findings also deliver a possible explanation for the increased injury risk towards the end of soccer matches’ halves: the pre-fatigued muscle may not be able to accumulate the same amount of eccentric muscle work as the unfatigued hamstrings and thus, less muscle work resulted in the same amount of muscle damage. Especially in the early stages of the stretch, where the unfatigued muscle might still be able to mitigate an eventual strain, this inability to absorb energy may increase the injury risk (Mair et al. The participants of the RF/ECC group showed no signs of increased vulnerability to muscle damage. One possible explanation might be that the fatigue session intentionally had no components of eccentric load to mitigate the repeated bout effect leading up to the damage protocol. Eccentric loading during the fatigue sessions could have prohibited conclusions about whether the differences in muscle damage are the result of the repeated bout effect or the residual fatigue. However, in regards to the observations by Ekstrand et al. (