More Evidence in Favor of Post-Activation Potentiation (PAP)

We have previous discussed post-activation potentiation (PAP) by which an explosive athletic performance is improved by doing heavy resistance exercise beforehand (see http://mens-fitness-and-healthdotcom.blogspot.com/2010/10/method-for-improving-explosive-physical.html).  A recent study provides further evidence of the effectiveness of this technique.

Matthews, Comfort and Crebin performed a study on ice hockey players from the English National League.

Experimental Procedure
On two different days, 11 players were timed for their maximal 25-meter sprint-speed on ice both before and 4 minutes after doing the following:

1. resting
2. sprinting while towing another skater

Results

• When the players rested between sprints, they showed no significant improvement in time between their first and second sprints.
• When the players skated against resistance following the first sprint, their second sprint took a significant 2.6% less time than their first one.

Bottom Line
This study supports others that have found improvement in explosive athletic performance when heavy resistance exercise is performed first. The resistance exercise should call upon the same muscles used in the athletic performance. Using resisted skating in this study was a good way to achieve this goal.