Concurrent Verbal Encouragement and Wingate Anaerobic Cycle Test Performance in Females: Athletes vs. Non-Athletes

Abstract

To examine the effect of concurrent verbal encouragement on the performance of the WAnT in female athletes vs. female non-athletes. College-age female subjects were recruited where ten of the subjects were intercollegiate athletes (ATH, n1 =10) and the nine were non-athletes (NON, n2 =9). The WAnT was novel to all subjects and the subjects were blinded to the study's purpose. Prior to the experimental trials, subjects were measured for body composition and performed a familiarity WAnT trial without verbal encouragement. Subjects then performed the WAnT twice, once with concurrent verbal encouragement (VE) and once without (NVE), in a balanced cross-over design. Peak (PP) and mean power (MP), and total work (TW) were compared between ATH and NON across VE and NVE using an ANOVA (1 between, 1 within), α=0.05. ATH and NON did not differ (p>0.05) in age or body composition with the exception of fat-free mass which differed significantly (ATH=53.7±6.6, NON=46.1±5.7 kg) (p<0.05). A significant (p<0.05) main effect for ATH/NON was observed where ATH outperformed NON when pooled across VE/NVE trials for PP (ATH=13.0±1.4, NON=11.3±1.7 W·kg-1), MP (ATH=7.7±1.1, NON=6.7±0.9 W·kg-1) and TW (ATH=232±35, NON=201±26 J·kg-1). When pooled across all subjects (ATH and NON), the VE/NVE trials did not differ (p>0.05) for PP (VE=12.4±1.7, NVE=12.0±1.9 W·kg-1), MP (VE=7.3±1.1, NVE=7.2±1.2 W·kg-1) and TW (VE=219±33, NVE=215±35 J·kg-1). The ATH/NON interaction with VE/NVE was not significant (p>0.05). Concurrent verbal encouragement does not affect performance on the WAnT in females, nor does it affect WAnT performance in female athletes and non-athletes differently.