Early explosive force reduction associated with exercise-induced muscle damage.

This study was aimed to analyze the loss of muscle explosive force in the early phase of eccentric exercise-induced damage, and its possible relationships with muscle soreness and blood creatine kinase (CK) levels. Squat jump (SJ) and counter-movement jump (CMJ) heights decreased in response to an eccentric exercise (120 eccentric actions of the knee extensors), with reductions that persisted at least for 24 h. The SJ/CMJ ratio was not significantly modified. Blood CK levels changed significantly over time and CK activity was significantly higher at 6 and at 24 h when compared to values obtained immediately after the eccentric exercise. Muscle soreness perceived at 6 h was slightly higher than that experienced just after finalizing the exercise and reached a clearly upper value at 24 h. A highly significant relationship between SJ and CMJ height loss was observed. CK activity at 24 h was significantly related to the SJ height loss at 6 h and to both the SJ height loss and the CMJ height loss immediately after the exercise. In summary, eccentric exercise induced a reduction in the explosive force generating capacity that affected in a similar way the pure concentric jump (SJ) and the jump eliciting the stretch-shortening cycle (CMJ). Results obtained suggest that CK activity is a better predictor of explosive force reduction than soreness, at least when values close to the peak are used.