Effects of Anodal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on Training Volume and Pleasure Responses in the Back Squat Exercise Following a Bench Press

This study aimed to investigate the effects of anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (a-tDCS) on volume-load and pleasure responses in a back squat following a bench press. Twelve male subjects advanced in resistance training (RT) (age, 25.5 ± 4.4 years) completed 2 experimental trials in a counterbalanced crossover design: a-tDCS and sham conditions. The stimulus was applied over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex for 20 minutes using a 2-mA current intensity in a-tDCS condition and 1 minute of active stimulus in the sham condition. Immediately after stimulation, subjects performed the bench press followed by the back squat. The exercise protocol consisted of 3 sets of maximum repetitions at an intensity of 80% of 1 repetition maximum. The volume-load, perceived pleasure, and arousal responses were measured during the RT protocol. The results indicated that volume-load was higher in the a-tDCS condition than in the sham condition for both exercises (p = 0.02), with large effect for the back squat (p = 0.045; d = 0.96). The higher volume-load was obtained by increasing the number of repetitions across all sets for the bench press (p ≤ 0.0001) and only in the first set for the back squat (p = 0.01). The circumplex model analysis showed a higher pleasure in the bench press and a tendency toward a higher pleasure in the a-tDCS condition. Anodal tDCS may be used as an ergogenic resource for increasing the back squat volume after performing the bench press in resi...
Source: Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research - Category: Sports Medicine Tags: Original Research Source Type: research