Introduction
The Hypothesis
The goal of this study was to determine if using the social comparison theory with competition would increase overall muscle grip fatigue time.
It is hypothesized that when pitted against one another in competition, we will find that the participants’ muscle grip fatigue time will increase in contrast to their individual muscle grip fatigue times.
Physiological Background
Muscle fatigue can be defined as the transient decline in maximal force or power capacity of muscle (Enoka and Duchateau 2008).
- In many studies, we see that skeletal muscle has the ability to contract to produce the force necessary to complete everyday tasks, however they do not have the ability to do this without impairment in performance or fatigue (Place et al. 2008).​
When skeletal muscle is first stimulated, cross bridges will form which will shorten our sarcomeres, and our series elastic elements will lengthen. If the load is greater than the force, then the muscle length will stay the same; this is referred to as an Isometric Contraction - which is what is seen in this study (Tandy 2021).
Similar Research
Recent studies have shown that the presence of a competitor can help increase physical effort of short and long durations of time (Le Bouc and Pessiglione 2013), and in this study we are going to test this theory with muscle grip fatigue time using the social comparison theory.