The purposes of this study were (1) to find out whether different types of warm-ups with additional contractions which cause post-activation potentiation (PAP) can result in improvement of a balanced task, and (2) to find out whether different types of contractions result in different improvements of balance task.
In the research, we included 17 volunteers. Each had to make a tandem stance eyes-closed on a tensiometric plate before a warm-up, 30 seconds after, 6 minutes after, and 12 minutes after the warm-up. We measured the velocity and amplitude of OSRP movements. Each session, participants completed one of three different warm-up protocols: (1) without a warm-up, which did not induce PAP, (2) a warm-up with excentric-concentric contractions, and (3) a warm-up with maximal isometric contractions. The order of protocols used was set randomly.
The results of our study showed that the second protocol which included excentric-concentric contractions improved the quality of tandem stance. However, the PAP effect occurred only 12 minutes after the warm-up. Using the isometric warm-up protocol, the quality of tandem stance decreased 30 seconds after the warm-up. The protocol without a warm-up did not influence the quality of the tandem stance. We concluded that warm-ups with excentric-concentric contractions were the most efficient protocol for the improvement of balance task performance but with a longer recovery period (≥ 12 min).
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