Effect of Imaginary Resisted Exercise on Handgrip Strength in Young Adults: An Experimental Study

Objective: Does exercise with imaginary resistance (not actual physical resistance) improve muscle strength?

Methods: An experimental study.

Participants: Normal healthy individuals without any musculoskeletal pathology of upper limb.

Intervention: A 6 week (5 days/week) intervention was given. This included handgrip exercise with imaginary resistance by observing in VR Box. 5 different type of resistance were imagined by participants by observing their own video in VR box. Which was shoot while participant were asked to do 10-10 repetitions with same 5 resistive objects on day one only to make them familiar with kind of resistance which they have to imagine. Every imaginary resistance exercise had 10 repetitions. Every session had 4 sets of same exercise. Post data was collected after 6 weeks.

Outcome measures: Handgrip strength in lb by using hydraulic hand dynamometer.

Results: Grip strength of Dominated Hands was calculated in pounds [lb] for all the 30 subjects with the help of hydraulic hand held dynamometer. Confidence interval (CI) wasconsidered to be 95% and level of significance (pvalue) was considered less than 0.05. Three trials were taken out of which highest reading was taken in to consideration and the mean value of Pre and Post hand grip strength were 57.8 lb and 69.5 lb simultaneously. 2 tailed student Pair t-test was used to compare pre and post data. 0.001p-value was found. Statistics showed significant improvement in handgrip strength while comparing pre and post data.

Conclusion: Imaginary resisted exercise is effective in improving strength.

Author(s): Juned Bolatar and Amit Sharma*

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