In this study, the SC-treated LL showed a longer sarcomere length and lower values of WBSF at all aging times. These results were in accordance with previous studies that had found a relationship between the tenderness and sarcomere length (Prado and Felicio, 2010 and Fernández and Vieira, 2012). Moreover, Devine et al. (1999) pointed out that the final muscle tenderness depends on sarcomere shortening during rigor and the extent of proteolytic activity, both of which are affected by rigor temperature. And the greatest beneficial rigor temperature is 15 °C. A conclusion that greatest tenderization of excised beef muscles during postmortem occurred with 14 °C pre-rigor chilling treatment for 10 h was reported by Li et al. (2012), who suggested an optimal chilling protocol with a rapid temperature decline to a core temperature of 14 °C and maintenance at 14 °C until 10 h postmortem, similar with our SC treatment procedure in cattle carcasses in this study.