The effect of ballistic potentiation protocols on elite sprint swimming: Optimizing performance.

Warming up prior to an athletic event is important for performance, however in some competition scenarios there is a long wait between completing the warm up and the event. Thus potentiation protocols are becoming increasingly popular in a competition environment. The aim of the study was to determine the effects of practical potentiation protocols on 15m start performance in national level swimmers. Eleven national level swimmers participated in the study. Using a randomized cross over design participants completed a 15m swimming start following 4 different experimental conditions (swim specific control, resisted band squat, weighted counter movement jumps, drop jumps from a 45cm box) each separated by at least 48h. A repeated measures ANOVA showed a significant difference in 15-m swimming start performance following different warm-up protocols (F (1.646, 14.810) =6.968, p=0.01) A Post hoc Bonferroni test indicated that 15-m start time was significantly quicker with the band squat protocol compared to the swim specific protocol (6.65 ± 0.43 v 6.78 ± 0.43 s respectively, p = 0.04). The results conclude that practical potentiation protocols are able to enhance 15-m swim start performance when combined with a swim specific warm-up and supports the use of post activation potentiation (PAP) during competitive swimming environments.