Objective measurement of proprioceptive technique consequences on muscular maximal voluntary contraction during manual muscle testing.

Response of Tibialis anterior muscle to a "proprioceptive technique" used in applied kinesiology was investigated during manual muscle testing using a graphical registration of both mechanical and electromyographic parameters. Experiments were conducted blind on ten subjects. Each subject was tested ten times, five as reference, five after proprioceptive technique application reputed to be inhibitory. Results indicated that when examiner-subject coordination was good an inhibition was easily registered. Therefore reliability of the proposed procedure is mostly dependent upon satisfactory subject-examiner coordination which is also necessary in standard clinical manual muscle testing.