Audience: Health professionals
I used to be a researcher (exercise biomechanics, physiotherapy, chiropractic) - one of my goals was to quantify how hard muscles worked during different exercises. This was important for determining which exercises may be best for targeting a certain muscle or determining how modifications to exercises (e.g. doing it barefoot or on a wobbly surface - for a simple paper look here) changed the targeted muscles response.
I used surface EMG which quantifies the electrical activity of that portion of a muscle that was under the electrodes. Surface EMG is messy and you are required to process the crap out of it to get something meaningful. (more…)