Brief isometric muscle contractions

[fox69]

A friend of mine mentioned that their physio gave them a rehabilitation exercise which consisted of doing repeated brief isometric contractions for the quadriceps muscle to counteract muscle wasting he experienced after surgery. Basically he was told to sit on the floor with his legs extended out in front flat on the floor, and then to pulse the quads of the leg being rehabilitated with contractions of maybe around 2 or 3 per second. I guess he did sets of about 20 seconds or so. Anyway he says it built the muscle tissue and strength back up until it surpassed the development of the muscles on the other leg.

Has anyone heard of this approach? I was wondering if it would apply to building strength in a more general exercise routine. It seems like it could be similar to EMS except the muscle recruitment would be lower. Any comments would be appreciated - I've done a bit of searching around the internet but haven't found anything about this subject.

[tyciol]

3 per second seems rapid, I tried to do that now, felt like I was trying to give it a spasm or something...

I dunno, I guess if you had a leg injury you would not be very mobile, so even the muscles of the non-injured leg might atrophy, so it's not implausible for the strength of the previously injured leg to surpass it once it's healed I guess.