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Arm-pull thrust in human swimming and the effect of post-activation potentiation
Citation
Barbosa, T. M., Yam, J. W., Lum, D., Balasekaran, G., & Marinho, D. A. (2020). Arm-pull thrust in human swimming and the effect of post-activation potentiation. Scientific Reports, 10(1), Article 8464. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-65494-z
Author
Abstract
The aim of this study was to analyse the front-crawl arm-pull kinetics and kinematics, comparing it before and after post-activation potentiation (PAP), and the associations between variables describing of the arm-pull kinetics. Twelve male competitive swimmers were randomly assigned to perform two different warm-ups in a crossover manner: (i) non-PAP (control condition); and (ii) PAP (experimental condition). PAP consisted of 2 × 5 arm-pulls with resistance bands by both upper-limbs. Eight minutes later, participants underwent a 25 m all-out trial in front-crawl arm-pull. Kinetics (i.e., peak thrust, mean thrust and thrust-time integral) and kinematics (i.e., speed and speed fluctuation) were collected by an in-house customised system composed of differential pressure sensors, speedo-meter and underwater camera. There was a significant and large improvement of the arm-pull kinetics after completing the warm-up with PAP sets (0.010 < P < 0.054, 0.50 < d < 0.74). There were non-significant and small effects of PAP on speed (P = 0.307, d = 0.18) and speed fluctuation (P = 0.498, d = 0.04). Correlation coefficients among kinetic variables were significant with large associations (0.51 < R < 0.90, 0.001 < P < 0.088). In conclusion, warm-ups including PAP conditioning sets elicit a large improvement
in the thrust, but with small improvement in performance. Variables used to characterise thrust are strongly correlated and hence can be used interchangeably.
Date Issued
2020
Publisher
Springer
Journal
Scientific Reports