Acute effect of plyometric and resistance band exercise on 50m swim performance

• Main Author: Lim, Amanda Xiang Qi
• Other Authors: Tiago Barbosa
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: DRNTU::Science
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/70079
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Postactivation potentiation (PAP) is one of many mechanisms that lead to improvement in exercise performance after warm up. However, evidence of its effect on swim stroke specific performance is lacking. This study aimed to investigate the effects of PAP, using minimal equipment, induced on two swim strokes - freestyle (FS) and butterfly (BF). Three different warm up routines, upper body PAP (UPAP) which includes resistance band pull exercise (RBP), a combination of upper and lower body PAP (CPAP) which includes RBP and countermovement jumps (CMJ), and a swim-specific warm up (SWU), were administered to compare the effects on 50m swim performance. 21 elite swimmers (18.29 ± 3.2 years, 174.02 ± 6.83 height and 63.79 ± 9.13 body mass) participated in this randomized crossover experimental study. All swims were recorded and all swim specific variables were measured. All tested variables were expressed by Mean (± 1 SD) and 90% confidence limits. An Excel spreadsheet for crossovers was used to calculate the smallest worthwhile effects and to determine the likelihood that the true effect was substantially harmful or beneficial. The main finding was “most likely” trivial positive effect on swimming performance with PAP for FS, and “possibly” trivial positive effect for BF. This concluded that PAP might potentially be useful to improve swimming performance over a distance of 50m.