Heavy squats acutely enhance repeated sprinting in national soccer players

As the topic of post-activation continues to receive greater attention among coaches and researchers, teams are experimenting with a variety of pre-training resistance training bouts in an effort to acutely enhance performance. One of the variables that remains unclear in the literature is the optimal load that athletes should use to induce a meaningful effect …

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Post-activation potentiation with heavy upper-body isometrics

The application of post-activation potentiation training has become more common among strength and conditioning circles. Preceding an explosive, high-velocity movement with a heavy set of strength work will transiently enhance performance by increasing power output, which may result in greater training adaptation.  However, the majority of post-activation potentiation research focuses on lower body movements such …

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Warm-up with Depth Jumps to Increase Sprint Speed

Some practical applications of post-activation potentiation for improving strength and power were discussed in last week’s post. Today’s post will piggy-back off of last week to discuss some interesting new research pertaining to post-activation potentiation and sprinting speed. There is ample research that demonstrates the effectiveness of heavy resistance training prior to a sprint to …

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Potentiating Working Sets for Strength Gains

Post-activation potentiation is a concept that coaches use to promote a transient performance increase in power movements subsequent to a strength movement. Complex or Contrast training was developed based on this phenomenon. To derive the benefits of post-activation potentiation, a basic strength exercise is performed with heavy load (e.g., >85% of 1RM) for 1-3 repetitions. …

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