Post-activation performance enhancement strategies in sport: a brief review for practitioners

Abstract

In this review, we will present and critically discuss how different conditioning exercises can be implemented in training, testing, and competition for the enhancement of performances in different sports, via post-activation performance enhancement and other delayed potentiation responses. The potentiation approaches described here include warming up, testing and monitoring, re-warm-up and priming strategies, and complex training. The post-activation performance enhancement responses can be best described following the new taxonomy, which allows the identification of the best strategies in every specific sport setting. This requires identifying the post-activation performance enhancement factors, which are the condi tioning activity, the verification test, the population of athletes; and potential moderators (i.e. exercise type and loading, timing; recovery interval, target exercise, performance parameter; training background, age, and sex). The inherent limitations to these approaches, including the gaps in literature requiring further studies, may be overcome in practice by using individualized approaches.

The acute effects of different high-intensity conditioning activities on sprint performance differ between sprinters of different strength and power characteristics

“…After the execution of each PAPE intervention, each participant performed one maximum 50 m sprint at 5, 10 and 15 min post the CA (all participants rest between the trials). The selection of the time intervals between the post-CAs' attempts was based on the fact that during the official competition there is a time window, ranging from 5 to 20 min, between the warm-up/ preparation of sprinters and their race, as well as on the commonly used time intervals from the related studies (Lim & Kong, 2013;Nealer, et al, 2017;Rahimi, 2007;Till & Cooke, 2009;Turner, et al, 2015) and on the suggestion of the recent reviews and metanalyses (Blazevich & Babault, 2019;Boullosa, 2021;Seitz & Haff, 2016;Seitz, Reyes, Tran, de Villarreal, & Haff, 2014;Tillin & Bishop, 2009;Turner, et al, 2015). During the period of the experiment sprinters did not participate in any kind of strenuous training, events, or physical activity at least two days before each intervention, while they follow their regular training regimen.…”

“…Finally, the mentioned CAs have never been compared between them until now, and thus coaches and athletes do not know which CA should be selected Probably, the reasons for these controversial results may rely on the methods that have been used until now. As it has been well documented, PAPE is highly affected by the type of CA, but also by the interaction of PAPE and CAs' induced fatigue, which may affect the needed rest time for the optimal increase in atthletes' performance (Blazevich & Babault, 2019;Bogdanis, et al, 2014;Boullosa, 2021;Kontou, et al, 2018;Seitz & Haff, 2016;Tillin & Bishop, 2009;Tsoukos, et al, 2013). Furthermore, even if PAPE is generally considered to be effective for a limited time period (~20 min), the time intervals may vary between the different types of CAs, with plyometric exercises and sprints to induce earlier the increases in performance compared to high or moderate intensity resist-ance type CAs (Seitz & Haff, 2016;Till & Cooke, 2009;Tillin & Bishop, 2009;Tsoukos, et al, 2013).…”

“…Nowadays, it is a common practice among athletes to use high intensity specific exercises following a warm-up in order to induce a short-term increase in their performance, prior to a competition. This practice is based on the phenomenon called postactivation performance enhancement (PAPE) (Blazevich & Babault, 2019;Boullosa, 2021). PAPE seems to enhance athletes' performance by the upregulation of many biological parameters, including the increase in muscle temperature, neural function, recruitment of type II motor units and changes of muscle architecture structure (Blazevich & Babault, 2019;Tillin & Bishop, 2009).…”

“…Indeed, the PAPE induced performance increases are highly determined by each athlete's strength, with the stronger athletes responding better compared to the weaker (Blazevich & Babault, 2019;Kontou, et al, 2018;Tillin & Bishop, 2009;Tsoukos, et al, 2013). Furthermore, a systematic review concluded that the PAPE effect is stronger after resistance exercises, like squats, especially when heavier lifts are applied, or after sprints, whereas it is weaker after lower or upper body ballistic and power demanding activities (Seitz & Haff, 2016); yet ballistic exercises induce PAPE sooner compared to heavy resistance exercises (Blazevich & Babault, 2019;Boullosa, 2021;Seitz & Haff, 2016). However, until now it is questionable if strength-or power-oriented CAs may lead to differential increases in performance between athletes of different strength and power characteristics.…”

Comparison of Aerobic Capacity Changes as a Result of a Polarized or Block Training Program among Trained Mountain Bike Cyclists

“…Competing in mountain bike cycling requires high aerobic capacity [1]. There are several types of training used to develop the aerobic capacity: (1) constant and moderate to low intensity training (LIT) [2][3][4][5]; (2) threshold training (TT), in which efforts are at power levels close to lactate or ventilatory threshold [2,3,6]; (3) high-intensity interval training (HIIT), in which a high-intensity effort is repeated with power close to maximal aerobic power [7,8] or higher than maximal aerobic power [9]; and (4) sprint interval training (SIT), which is performed at maximal intensity (all-out efforts) [10] or close to maximal [11].…”