in my opinion… that question becomes most important when you have a client/yourself have suffered from some kind of patella/anterior knee pain… or if you have altered firing patterns between the VL and VMO… in some people you can see it so clearly that VL fires before VMO when doing some form of TKE. usually in these people they have some kind of knee pain or they are at greater risk to injury to the knee.
so if you or someone you’re training has a firing pattern problem i would definitely perform the VMO/TKE work prior to leg strength exercises (squats etc).
i would also finish the session with some kind of tke work if you have some kind of problems…
other than that, i don’t think it really matters for people without symptoms. just make sure you get the tke/vmo work in somewhere.
peace
here’s a study you might like:
Comparative reflex response times of vastus medialis obliquus and vastus lateralis in normal subjects and subjects with extensor mechanism dysfunction
An electromyographic study
Michael L. Voight, MEd, PT, ATC, SCS
Division of Physical Therapy, University of Miami School of Medicine, Miami, Florida
Deborah L. Wieder, MS, PT, ATC
Division of Physical Therapy, University of Miami School of Medicine, Miami, Florida
Reflex response times of the vastus medialis obliquus and vastus lateralis were evaluated in 41 normal sub jects and 16 patients with extensor mechanism dys function. The reflex response times for both muscles to a patellar tendon tap were evaluated by electro myography. The latencies of the muscles were statis tically analyzed in both groups. In normal subjects, one- tailed paired-sample t-tests determined that the vastus medialis obliquus fired significantly faster than the vas tus lateralis (P < 0.001). In the patients, the vastus lateralis fired significantly faster than the vastus medi alis obliquus (P < 0.001).
A chi square goodness of fit test demonstrated a dependency between the order of muscle firing and the type of subject (P < 0.001). Two- tailed independent-sample t-tests revealed that the pa tients demonstrated a significantly faster vastus later alis response time than the normal subjects (P < 0.001), whereas the vastus medialis obliquus times were not significantly different. This increase in vastus lateralis reflex response time may indicate a motor control prob lem in the patient with extensor mechanism dysfunc tion.
Results indicate that there is a reversal of the normal muscular firing order between the two muscles in these patients. Patients with extensor mechanism dysfunction may be demonstrating a neurophysiologic motor control imbalance that may account for or con tribute to their anterior knee pain.
