In particular, there was a tendency towards significance for the exercise duration (F 1,6 = 5.89, p = 0.051, η 2 p = 0.50), and a significant interaction between exercise duration and hemicycles (F 1.54,9.24 = 6.15, p = 0.025, η 2 p = 0.51).
In fact, local pairwise comparisons performed within each exercise duration showed significant differences between pre- and post- exercise for the first four hemicycles during 20-min exercise ( Figure 3 A) and a tendency toward significance for the first hemicycle during the 40-min exercise ( Figure 3 B; p = 0.055).
As for the relationship between muscle EMG and stiffness, the only notable result occurred after 20-min exercise and concerned a marginally significant correlation between the RF latency and the EMG activity of the RF during the first flexion. 4.