Neuromuscular Interventions to Enhance Power for Sporting Performance

Abstract

Mechanical power is crucial for sports performance, and is often enhanced acutely through warm-up, priming, or post-activation potentiation (PAP) protocols. These methods typically improve power for 3-12 min post-exercise, but many sports have a 20-minute transition between warm-up and competition, making traditional priming methods impractical. This thesis investigates flywheel-based protocols to enhance mechanical power beyond 20 min post exercise. Chapter 1 reviews the importance of mechanical power, various priming methods, and underlying neuromuscular mechanisms. Chapter 2 shows that flywheel squat priming protocols increases jump performance but offers no additional advantage in improving jump performance when compared to a lunge-warm-up. Interestingly, neither RF or VL Vrn showed any consistent patterns of change in response to either flywheel squat protocols or the lunge warm-up. Chapter 3 reveals increased intramuscular temperature in the vastus lateralis across all conditions, implying temperature’s role in power enhancement, despite a decrease in evoked torque. Chapter 4 found increases in jump performance following a single set of flywheel squats, with or without a lunge complex re-warmup in males, but not in females, with the addition of a lunge complex re-warmup offering higher jump performance improvements compared to without employing the re-warmup. RF Vrn increased at similar timepoints in males, while females saw an overall increase over time. Similarly, cSP was reduced in males, while high-stimulation evoked torque was reduced in both males and females. Finally, building on our previous chapters looking at improving power. We investigated the contribution of power to swim performance. Where we investigated the relationship between dryland performance tests and standardised swimming performance in Chapter 5. We found no significant relationship between dryland power measures and swim performance in elite swimmers. Notably, the clustering of swimmers by event and sex is crucial for practitioners and researchers, as it reduces the time required to study relationships between variables and standardised swim performance. This thesis offers valuable insights into logistically feasible priming protocols and the importance of understanding neuromuscular mechanisms and predictive variables in sports performance.