A Comparison of Warm-Up Modalities on Upper Body Force Production Measures

Abstract

Warm-ups are often initiated before an athletic event in order to prepare the athlete’s body for competition by increasing blood flow to the working muscles. When a warm-up also activates nerve-muscle function, producing a level of high-intensity power even after the muscle contraction occurs, it is known as post-activation potentiation (PAP). Most PAP warm-ups include high-load, low-velocity conditioning contractions whereas a low-load, high-velocity conditioning contraction may be a more user-friendly warm-up. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of PAP after low-load, high-velocity conditioning contractions on subsequent upper body power exercises. Ten recreationally trained males (age: 23.2 yrs; height: 178.1 cm; mass: 88.3 kg; see Table 1) volunteered to participate in three testing sessions, each separated by 24-48 hours. The testing conditions were 10% of 1RM bench press and 20% 1RM bench press. After the conditioning contraction, participant’s performed a plyometric push-up immediately after and then 4- and 8-minutes after the warm-up. The plyometric push-up was performed on a force platform in order to gather the dependent variables: ground reaction force, normalized ground reaction force, and rate of force development. No main effect or interaction was found for any variables (p>.05). Subjects showed no strength improvements after performing the conditioning contractions, and further research must be done in order to validate other research on low-load, high-velocity conditioning contractions