Professor Uwe Proske

BSc (Hons) (Adelaide), PhD (Monash), DSc (Monash)

Emeritus Professor - Department of Physiology

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Background

Professor Uwe Proske obtained his PhD in 1968 under the supervision of A.K. McIntyre, the Foundation Professor of Physiology at Monash. He was appointed to a lectureship in 1974, became a Reader in 1984 and was appointed to a Personal Chair in Physiology in 1994.

Current Research Interests

For most of his career, Uwe Proske's research has focussed on the sense organs in mammalian muscle, the muscle spindle and tendon organ. More recently Uwe has concentrated on research in a number of areas of Sports and Exercise as detailed below;

Hamstring Injury
Recently an aspect of the laboratory’s research has been on a common soft-tissue injury, the hamstring strain. Identifying muscle mechanical measurements that can highlight an athlete’s susceptibility to this injury is of major interest. Here the main hypothesis is that damage from eccentric exercise is a precursor event that may lead to a strain injury.

Warm-Up
The effect of warm-up exercises on the soreness from eccentric exercise has been studied. Given that most athletes carry out routine warm-up and as yet there is no scientific basis for its effects, this is a research area of great interest. It seems that the warm-up offsets the rise in passive tension after eccentric exercise, and that, in turn, reduces soreness.

Exercise, Proprioception and Muscle Pain
Studies carried out in Uwe’s laboratory have shown that after all forms of intense exercise, including both eccentric and concentric exercise, subjects have a disturbed limb position sense. It is hypothesized that this is due to an altered sense of effort. In related experiments it was shown that muscle soreness like that experienced after eccentric exercise can produce errors in limb position sense.

Effect of Fatigue on Damage from Eccentric Exercise?
This is a current series of animal experiments done in collaboration with D.L. Morgan and J.E. Gregory. It was shown that muscles fatigued by a period of intense concentric exercise, which does not produce any damage, did not alter the susceptibility for damage from eccentric exercise. This is a result of importance for athlete training programs and for sports medicine. The work was recently published in the Journal of Physiology.

Recent Publications

Morgan, D.L., Gregory, J.E. & Proske, U. (2004) The influence
of fatigue on damage from eccentric contractions in the gastrocnemius
muscle of the cat. Journal of Physiology. (In Press).

Parikh, S., Morgan, D.L., Gregory, J.E. & Proske, U. (2004).
Low-frequency depression of tension in the cat's gastrocnemius muscle
after eccentric exercise. Journal of Applied Physiology. 97: 1195-1202.

Walsh, L.D., Hesse, C.W., Morgan, D.L. & Proske, U. (2004). Human
forearm position sense after fatigue of elbow flexor muscles.  Journal
of Physiology. 558.2: 705-715.

U. Proske, j.e. Gregory, D.L. Morgan, P. Percival, N.S. Weerakkody
& B.J. Canny (2004).  Force matching errors following eccentric
exercise.  Human Movement Science (In Press).

Proske, U., Percival, P. & Morgan, D.L. (2004).  Identifying
atgletes at risk of hamstring strains and how to protect them. Clinical
and Experimental Pharmacology and Physiology. 31: 546-550.

Morgan, D.L. & Proske, U. (2004). Popping sarcomere hypothesis
explains stretch induced muscle damage.  Clinical and Experimental
Pharmacology and Physiology. 31: 541-545.

Gregory, J.E., Morgan, D.L. & Proske, U. (2004).  Responses of
muscle spindles following a series of eccentric contractions.
Experimental Brain Research 157: 234-240.

Porter, R. Proske, U. & Mark, R.F. (2004).  Archibald Keverall
McIntyre 1913-2002. Historical Records of Australian Science 15: 77-94.

Brockett, C.L., Morgan, D.L. & Proske, U. (2004).  Predicting
hamstring strain injury in elite athletes.  Medicine and Science in
Sports and Exercise 36: 379-387.

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