Does muscular fatigue affect the functional stability of male athletes?

Muscular fatigue (MF) is a phenomenon which commonly occurs in daily sports activities and results in the worsening of motor performance. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of muscular fatigue on functional stability among male athletes. Fourty two professional healthy athletes with a mean age of 25.2 ± 3.2 years and weight of 80.4 ± 8.4 kg were selected and subsequently divided into two groups: the experimental and the control. In this study the RUNING ANAEROBIC SPRINT TEST (RAST) was used for fatigue induction, the Biodex system (level 4) was applied for stability indices evaluation and a lactometer was utilized for blood lactate measurement. The independent- and paired-t tests were used for statistical analysis of data (α ≤ 0.05). The results indicated that muscular fatigue could affect the limit of stability (P ≤ 0.002) and the lateral stability index (P ≤ 0.003) but did not have any significant effect on the anterior-posterior index of the Biodex system (P = 0.310). With regard to the results, it can be concluded that while not having any significant effect on Ant-Post stability indices, fatigue protocol may affect the lateral functional stability index. This conclusion, however, needs further qualification.