Effects of Post-Activation Potentiation induced by a plyometric protocol on deceleration performance.

Post-Activation Potentiation is a phenomenon by which muscular performance characteristics are acutely enhanced as a result of their previous contractile actions. It has been shown how Post-Activation Potentiation, which is usually evoked through heavy resistance exercise, has the potential to improve many different power performances, such as sprinting and jumping. Due to an easier applicability, some studies explored the potential of plyometric muscular actions to evoke the effects of Post-Activation Potentiation. Despite some findings on acceleration running performance, to the authors best knowledge, no studies investigated the effects of Post-Activation Potentiation on deceleration performance, which is a key factor in sports involving change of directions. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the influence of a plyometric exercise protocol to a subsequent deceleration running performance. University soccer players (n = 18) performed 7 deceleration trials: at baseline and after [~] 15 seconds, 2, 4, 8, 12 and 16 minutes a walking control condition (C) or 3 sets of 10 repetitions of alternate-leg bounding (plyometric, P). Results show that no significant differences were found at any of the trials of the control condition (C) in comparison to the relative baseline. In the plyometric condition (P), the deceleration performance executed 2 minutes after the plyometric activity resulted significantly faster compared to the relative baseline (p = 0.042; ES = 0.86, large effect; % of improvement = 4.13 %). Therefore, the main findings of this study showed that a plyometric exercise has the potential to improve a subsequent running deceleration performance in soccer players, if an adequate recovery between these activities is provided to the players. These findings encourage further future investigations about the possible potentiating effects of plyometric activities on more complex actions like changes of direction and agility.