The eminent Saudi football club Ittihad FC has decided to refine injury prevention‬ and ‪‎training optimization‬ protocols with ‪tensiomyography‬.‬‬‬‬ When Nacho Martínez, an avid TMG user, became S&C coach at Ittihad FC, he wanted to apply the benefits of tensiomyography also there.

King’s College from Pennsylvania applied the TMG S1 system to the training routines of their sportsmen in order to boost their training protocols and athletic performance.

At the 25th Isokinetic Conference: Football Medicine Strategies – Return to Play, which will be held between the 9th and 10th of April in London (UK), we will hold a workshop with the title Tensiomyography (tmg) as an objective measure of the RTP progress. The workshop will address several scenarios in the RTP process that can be optimized with the help of tensiomyography. The workshop will be followed by a wine party. As many congress attendees have already confirmed their participation, we kindly invite you to make a reservation ASAP at info@tmg.si in order to secure your spot.

In the recently published article in BJSM, prof. Jan Ekstrand and his colleagues presented the results of their 13-year-long longitudinal analysis of hamstring injuries performed among the 36 UEFA Elite Clubs from 12 European countries.

Between 2001 and 2014, a total of 1614 hamstring injuries were recorded; 22% of players sustained at least one hamstring injury during a season. The overall hamstring injury rate over the 13-year period was 1.20 injuries per 1000 h; while the match injury rate (4.77) was 9 times higher than the training injury rate. The time-trend analysis showed an annual average 2.3% year on year increase in the total hamstring injury rate over the 13-year period. This increase over time was most pronounced in training injuries—these increased by 4.0% per year. The average hamstring injury burden was 19.7 days per 1000 h. The authors conclude the article with findings that training-related hamstring injury rates have increased substantially since 2001 but match-related injury rates have remained stable. Consequently, the challenge is for clubs to reduce training-related hamstring injury rates without impairing match performance.

We are glad to support The Peruvian Football Federation with TMG technology. The Federation will use the TMG S1 system as one of the means for the selection of players for their first team.

Faculty of Health Sciences from Ljubljana added the TMG S1 system to their line of advanced diagnostic technology. They will use our system to gain an in-depth insight into the rehabilitation process after muscle injury. We are looking forward to seeing the results of their research work and happy to have a new research partner.

Morales, et al. have recently published an article in which they investigate the efficacy of tensiomyography (TMG) in assessing muscle contractile function at acute moderate altitude. Biceps femoris (BF) and vastus lateralis (VL) muscles of 18 athletes were assessed at sea level and moderate altitude by using electrically evoked contractions on two consecutive days. Maximum radial displacement (Dm), time of contraction (Tc), reaction time (Td), sustained contraction time (Ts), and relaxation time (Tr) were recorded at 40, 60, 80, and 100 mA. At altitude, VL showed lower Dm values at 40 mA (p = 0.008; ES = -0.237). Biceps femoris showed Dm decrements in all electrical stimulations (p < 0.001, ES > 0.61). In VL, Tc was longer at altitude at 40 (p = 0.031, ES = 0.56), and 100 mA (p = 0.03, ES = 0.51). Regarding Td, VL showed significant increases in all electrical intensities under hypoxia (p ≤ 0.03, ES ≥ 0.33). They conclude that TMG appears effective at detecting slight changes in muscle contractile properties at moderate altitude.

After Saudi Arabia and Iran, we have extended our presence in the Middle East also to Egypt, with the help of our local distributor Plan Med. They have already received a TMG S1 demo system and promoted our products at several conferences and workshops.

We have presented the benefits of ‪tensiomyography‬ at the International Congress on Team Sports (ICTS) in Seville, Spain. As the congress was focused on football, we presented the strengths of our methodology in the ‪field of RTP, ‎injury‬ ‪prevention‬ and ‪training‬ ‪‎optimization.‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

In the recent article published in the BJSM, professor Ekstrand and his colleagues have evaluated the Munich consensus on muscle injury classification. They conclude the study with the words that even though the Munich muscle classification demonstrates a positive prognostic validity for the return to play after a thigh muscle injury in professional male football players, there are still many opportunities for improvement, especially in the field of functional muscle disorders. Unlike with the structural muscle disorders, functional disorders cannot be diagnosed and monitored with an MRI or other widely used methods. They do not provide useful information in later stages when the muscle structure recovers, yet the muscle function stays impaired. Only methods such as tensiomyography evaluate muscle function. With the implementation of such methods, functional muscle disorders can be detected and treated in an efficient manner, which leads to a faster RTP and lower re-injury rates.