Post-activation performance enhancement strategies in sport: a brief review for practitioners

Abstract

[EN] In this review, we will present and critically discuss how different conditioning exercises can be implemented in training, testing, and competition for the enhancement of performances in different sports, via post-activation performance enhance- ment and other delayed potentiation responses. The potentiation approaches described here include warming up, testing and monitoring, re-warm-up and priming strategies, and complex training. The post-activation performance enhancement responses can be best described following the new taxonomy, which allows the identification of the best strategies in every specific sport setting. This requires identifying the post-activation performance enhancement factors, which are the con- ditioning activity, the verification test, the population of athletes; and potential moderators (i.e. exercise type and loading, timing; recovery interval, target exercise, performance parameter; training background, age, and sex). The inherent limitations to these approaches, including the gaps in literature requiring further studies, may be overcome in practice by using indivi- dualized approaches.