Influence of Recovery Time on Warm-up Effects in Male Adolescent Athletes

Abstract

Despite the common practice of using static stretching (SS) as part of the warm-up in most youth sport programs, recent findings indicate that pre-exercise SS may reduce performance in young athletes through decreases in force and power. While the functional significance of different warm-up protocols on performance continues to be explored, the optimal recovery period between the pre-event stimulus and subsequent activity has yet to be defined. PURPOSE: To examine the influence of recovery time following a dynamic warm-up (DY) and a SS warm-up on power performance in adolescent athletes. METHODS: Following baseline testing on the vertical jump (VJ) and seated medicine ball toss (MB), subjects participated in a 10-minute warm-up protocol which consisted of either SS or DY. The SS protocol consisted of 5 slow and sustained stretches for the major muscle groups and the DY protocol consisted of nine moderate-to high-intensity dynamic movements that were performed with maximal or near maximal effort. Subsequently, VJ and MB were assessed at the following time points during the recovery period: 2, 6, 10, 14, 18, 22 min. RESULTS: Analysis of the data revealed that VJ was significantly greater following DY than SS at 2, 6, 10, 14 and 18 min. Post-hoc analyses indicated a significant increase in VJ from baseline at 2 and 6 min following DY (2.6% to 3.9%) and a significant decrease in VJ from baseline at 2, 6, 10, 14 and 18 min following SS (-3.2% to -7.0%). No significant interaction effects between DY and SS were observed for MB. CONCLUSION: The main finding of this study was that a warm-up protocol which included DY resulted in superior VJ performance during the first 18 min of recovery as compared to a warm-up protocol that included SS in male adolescent athletes. In addition, the effects of DY on lower body power performance were most pronounced during the first 2 to 6 min following the pre-event protocol whereas the negative consequences of SS on lower body power performance lingered for 18 min.