Muscle Synergy during Double-Leg Attack maneuver: A Comparison between Elite and Sub-Elite Wrestlers

Freestyle wrestling requires precise and coordinated movement execution, with the Double-Leg Attack technique playing a crucial role in gaining an advantage. Understanding the underlying mechanisms and effects of specialized wrestling training is essential for optimizing performance. Muscle synergy or modular movement control involves coordinated patterns of muscle activation and the organization of muscles into functional units or modules. Exploring these concepts in freestyle wrestling can provide insights into optimizing movement coordination and performance outcomes by studying the synergistic interaction of different muscles. This study  investigates the effect of consistent and specialized Freestyle wrestling training on upper limb muscle synergy during the Double-Leg Attack maneuver, specifically comparing elite and sub-elite wrestlers. Thirty-eight junior Iranian male freestyle wrestlers were categorized based on their skill level. Elite group (n = 19) who participated in national or international-level competitions and achieved notable success and sub-elite group (n = 19) actively engaged in training but have not yet reached the same competitive level. We recorded EMG activity from five unilateral upper limb muscles and employed a non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) algorithm to extract the muscle synergy composition and temporal activation patterns during the Double-Leg Attack maneuver. In both the elite and sub-elite groups, three distinct muscle synergies (Syn1, Syn2, and Syn3) were identified and extracted. Notably, both groups showed impressive coherence within their respective groups in terms of spatial structures and temporal activation patterns of muscle synergies during the Double-Leg Attack technique. However, it was observed that elite wrestlers exhibited significantly higher values in temporal activation patterns compared to their sub-elite counterparts (P=0.000). The findings of this study highlight the importance of consistent and specialized Freestyle wrestling training in optimizing muscle synergy during the Double-Leg Attack technique. Significant differences observed in the temporal activation patterns suggest that elite wrestlers possess a higher level of temporal precision and coordination, which may contribute to their competitive advantage. These findings provide valuable insights for wrestlers and coaches to guide training strategies focused on enhancing muscle synergy and temporal coordination for improved performance in Freestyle wrestling.