Performance effects of repetition specific gluteal activation protocols on acceleration in male rugby union players

Lorna Barry, Ian Kenny, Thomas Comyns

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Warm-up protocols have the potential to cause an acute enhancement of dynamic sprinting performance. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of three repetition specific gluteal activation warm-up protocols on acceleration performance in male rugby union players. Forty male academy rugby union players were randomly assigned to one of 4 groups (control, 5, 10 or 15 repetition gluteal activation group) and performed 10 m sprints at baseline and 30 s, 2, 4, 6 and 8 min after their specific intervention protocol. Five and ten meter sprint times were the dependent variable and dual-beam timing gates were used to record all sprint times. Repeated measures analysis of variance found no significant improvement in 5 and 10 m sprint times between baseline and post warm-up scores (p > 0.05) for all groups. There were no reported significant differences between groups at any of the rest interval time points (p > 0.05). However, when individual responses to the warm-up protocols were analyzed, the 15 repetition gluteal activation group had faster 10 m times post-intervention and this improvement was significant (p = 0.021). These results would indicate that there is no specific rest interval for any of the gluteal interventions that results in a potentiation effect on acceleration performance. However, the individual response analysis would seem to indicate that a 15 repetition gluteal activation warm-up protocol has a potentiating effect on acceleration performance provided that the rest interval is adequately and individually determined.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)33-42
Number of pages10
JournalJournal of Human Kinetics
Volume54
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016

Keywords

  • Plyometrics
  • Rest interval
  • Sprinting
  • Warm-up

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