Background and Aim: Athletes usePyarmid and Reverse Pyramid loadings in resistance training to increase training load. Although researches have shown that each loading is effective in increasing strength and muscle mass, from the viewpoint of risk of injury and biomechanics, the differences between these two patterns on athletic performance have not been fully understood. The purpose of the current study was to examine muscular electromyography during deadlift in pyramid and reverse pyramid loadings. Materials and Methods: A total of 15 amateur female bodybuilders voluntarily participated in the current study taking part in five Repeated Maximum (5RM) calculation test as well as deadlift test with pyramid and reverse pyramid loading at 60%, 80%, and 100% of 5 RM during three days with 48 hours rest. Rectus Femoris, Vastus Medialis, Biceps Femoris, Tibialis Anterior, Gastrocnemius, Gluteus Maximus, and Erector Spine EMG were collected using MyoMuscle Noraxon system at 1500 Hz frequency during deadlift tasks. The muscular IEMG and hamstring to quadriceps co-contraction during five squat repeats were calculated and compared in similar loads during pyramid and reverse pyramid loadings. Results: The results of dependent t-test showed that lower extremity muscular EMG did not have significant differences in similar loads at pyramid and reverse pyramid loadings (P > 0. 05); however, hamstring to quadriceps co-contraction was significantly higher in pyramid compared with reverse pyramid in similar loadings (P ≤ 0. 05). Conclusion: According to the results, both pyramid and reverse pyramid loadings in deadlift can cause similar muscular activation in females, and female athletes and coaches can use both these methods to increase muscular force capacity. However, because of higher hamstring to quadriceps co-contraction in pyramid, compared with reverse pyramid loading, it seems that using pyramid loading is more reasonable to increasing joint stability and reducing injuries.

Background and Aims Pyramid and reverse pyramid loading patterns are used to increase the training load in resistance training. Although physiological studies have attempted to compare the two patterns, the difference between the two loading patterns on the biomechanics of the spine and pelvis has not been determined. This study aimed to investigate the effect of pyramid and inverted pyramid loadings on spinal and pelvic coordination variability in squat movement. Methods Twelve bodybuilding athletes in Tehran City, Iran, voluntarily participated in this study. The subjects performed squat movements as the pyramid and reverse pyramid at intensities of 50%, 70%, and 90% of ten maximum repetitions. Then, the kinematic information of the three segments of their spine and pelvis was recorded. Coordination and variability coordination were calculated using a modified vector coding method. Results The results of repeated measures analysis of variance showed a significant difference in the coordination pattern for pelvic-lower back coordination, lower-back to lower-trunk spine, and lower-trunk-to-upper-trunk spine in the intensity of 50%. A significant difference was observed in the coordination pattern, with an intensity of 70% for the lower back and lower trunk spine. Also, no statistical significance was observed between the pyramidal and inverted pyramidal loading types for spine and pelvis coordination. Conclusion According to the results of increasing the load in pyramid loading and decreasing the load in reverse loading, the coordination of distal couplings affected the sagittal plane more than the proximal one. It is recommended to use the reverse pyramid method for exercises and be more careful when performing pyramid exercises.

Background and Aim: Pyarmid and Reverse Pyramid loadings are used in resistance training to increase training load. Although physiological researches have tried to compare these two patterns, the differences between these two patterns on lower extremity joints biomechanics from injury risk have not been understood. The purpose of the present research was to compare hip and knee kinematics during squat at pyramid and reverse pyramid loading. Materials and Methods: A total of 15 amateur bodybuilders from Karaj city voluntarily participated in five Repeated Maximum (5RM) calculation tests as well as a squat test with pyramid and reverse pyramid loading at 60%, 80%, and 100% of 5RM during three days with 48 hours interval. Hip and knee three-dimensional angles were registered with MyoMotion Noraxon motion capture system at 100 Hz frequency during squat tasks. The mean value for peak hip flexion, adduction, and internal rotation, as well as knee flexion and valgus during five squat repeats, were calculated and compared in similar loads during two kinds of pyramid and reverse pyramid loadings. Results: The results of dependent t-test showed that peak hip flexion, adduction, and internal rotation, as well as knee flexion and valgus at similar loads, had significant increase in reverse pyramid loading compared with pyramid loading (P ≤ 0. 05). Conclusion: According to the results of the present study, since the increase in peak value of examined angles is an indicator for increase knee joint injuries, regarding the increase in these peak angles during reverse pyramid loading as compared with pyramid loading, it is suggested that coaches and amateur athletes use pyramid loading during their trainings.

The use of wavelets in denoising, seems to be an advantage in representing well the details. However, the edges are not so well preserved. Total variation technique has advantages over simple denoising techniques such as linear smoothing or median filtering, which reduce noise, but at the same time smooth away edges to a greater or lesser degree.In this paper, an efficient denoising method based on Total Variation model (TV), and Dual-Tree Complex Wavelet Transform (DTCWT) is proposed to incorporate both properties. In our method, TV is employed to refine low-passed coefficients and DTCWT is used to shrink high-passed noisy coefficients to achieve more accurate image recovery. The efficiency of our approach is firstly analyzed by comparing the results with well-known methods such as probShrink, BLS-GSM, SUREbivariate, NL-Means and TV model.Secondly, it is compared to some denoising methods, which have been reported recently.Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the Steerable pyramid denoising by 8.5% in terms of PSNR and 17.5% in terms of SSIM for standard images.Obtained results convince us that the proposed scheme provides a better performance in noise blocking among reported state-of-the-art methods.

To Editor, As final-year doctoral students of medical education, we have been studying numerous articles citing Edgar Dale’, s learning pyramid,therefore, Masters’,perspective on this topic is fascinating to us. 1 According to Masters, increased citations of the Learning Pyramid are likely caused by poor referencing practices such as failing to study primary sources, misreading articles, or citing rebuttals of the Pyramid. However, Masters believes that the increased citations of the Pyramid are primarily due to the authors’,politically conservative styles. Thus, treating the Pyramid as worthless does not seem appropriate in academic works.