The following protocol is to be used when evaluating the relative value of work that a select group of muscles puts forth for one exercise as compared to another exercise, or exercises.

Initial setup

Depending on the number of muscles to be evaluated, it would be most advantageous to use a surface electromyography (sEMG) module that would be able to accommodate at least double the number of muscles to be studied which would make possible the handling of both the left and right muscles of each group. If this is not possible, or the number of exercises to be compared cannot be performed in one session, then a normalization procedure will be necessary to assure the uniformity of the data.

Uniformity of data

It is essential to reduce the variables to an absolute minimum so that the only variable is the effect of one exercise upon a group of muscles as compared to another. To accomplish this goal, the following minimum requirements must be followed:

1) During the entire period that the evaluation is being conducted, the test subject cannot change either in person or in health. If this is not possible, the evaluation must be started anew.

2)  Since output changes from day to day, due to placement of the electrode pads, an exercise must be chosen, as the normalization standard, that will generate a reasonable output for each muscle group being evaluated. This exercise then must be performed, and the outputs recorded, each day before proceeding with the other exercises that are being evaluated.

3)  Since the amount of work a muscle puts forth increases when it approaches fatigue, it is essential that the time period chosen for all of the exercises, under study, will take the majority of the muscles to fatigue. Also, the test subject should be in good enough condition, and the recovery period long enough, so that going to fatigue multiple times in one day does not affect the output of one exercise upon another. To verify that this does not happen , the same normalization exercise that was performed at the beginning of the session should be repeated at the end of the session. If the outputs vary by more than 10%, then they should be averaged for the day; otherwise, use the beginning outputs as the normalizing constants for that day.