Francisco Piqueras, the Head of Sports Science at Spanish Futsal Levante UD DM, has implemented a periodical tensiomyography diagnostics into the club’s daily routine. Every two months, he uses TMG to assess 8 muscle pairs: AL, BF, ST, VM, VL, RF, GM, GL. On the basis of the results, additional training protocols in the field of injury prevention, training optimization or rehabilitation are then developed on an individual level. As a consequence, the club managed to improve the physical performance of their players and reduce the rate of muscle injuries.

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.

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.

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.