Background: Compression garments (CG) are commonly used by athletes to improve motor performance and\nrecovery during or following exercise. Numerous studies have investigated the effect of CG on physiological and\nphysical parameters with variable results as to their efficacy. A possible effect of commercially available CG may\nbe to induce a change in leg mechanical characteristics during repetitive tasks to fatigue. This investigation\ndetermined the effect of CG on performance and vertical stiffness during single-leg-hopping to exhaustion.\nMethods: Thirty-eight healthy, male participants, mean (SD) 22.1 (2.8) years of age performed single-leg hopping\nat 2.2 Hz to volitional exhaustion with a CG, without CG and with a sham. Differences in total duration of hopping\n(1-way repeated ANOVA) and dependant variables for the start and end periods (2-way repeated ANOVA) including\nduration of flight (tf), loading (tl) and contact (tc) phases, vertical height displacement during flight (zf) and loading\n(zl) phases, normalised peak vertical ground reaction force (FzN) and normalised vertical stiffness (kN), were\ndetermined. Bonferroni correction was performed to reduce the risk of type 1 error.\nResults: There was no significant difference (p = 0.73) in the total duration of hopping between conditions\n(CG (mean (SD)) 89.6 (36.3) s; without CG 88.5 (27.5) s; sham 91.3 (27.7) s). There were no significant differences\nbetween conditions for spatiotemporal or kinetic characteristics (p > 0.05). From the start to the end periods there\nwas no significant difference in tl (p = 0.15), significant decrease in tf (p < 0.001), zf and zl (p < 0.001) and increase in\ntc (p < 0.001). There was also a significant increase in kN from start to end periods (p < 0.01) ranging from 9.6 to 14.2%.\nConclusions: This study demonstrates that commercially available CG did not induce a change in spatiotemporal or\nvertical stiffness during a fatiguing task. The finding that vertical stiffness increased towards the end of the task, while\nhopping frequency and duration of loading were maintained, may indicate that there was an alteration to the motor\ncontrol strategy as fatigue approached.
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