Effects of three different conditioning activity volumes on the optimal recovery time for potentiation in college athletes

This study examined the effect of 3 postactivation potentiation (PAP) protocols, differentiated by volume and with controlled intensity, on the recovery time required to observe enhanced jumping performance in recreationally trained college athletes. Following a randomized controlled order, 11 participants, 7 men and 4 women (age 25.4 ± 2.1 years, height 176.2 ± 7.7 cm, body mass 77.6 ± 7.7 kg), performed a countermovement jump (CMJ) at baseline and at 15 seconds, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, and 12 minutes after the 3 treatment conditions: low volume (LV, parallel squat [PS] with 80%, 1 repetition [rep]), moderate volume (MV, PS with 80%, 1 set of 3 reps), and high volume (HV, PS with 80%, 3 sets of 3 reps). Significantly lower CMJ heights were measured at 3 and 5 minutes from LV to HV (p 0.048) and MV (p 0.005) conditions, respectively. No significant differences were determined when comparing the 8 tested time points within each of the assessed volume protocols. However, effect size analysis indicated that higher CMJ performances displayed from 1 to 8 minutes with respect to both baseline and 15-second performance for MV (d 0.91-3.18) and HV (d 0.79) conditions. In conclusion, MV and HV protocols seem to be more effective to elicit potentiation compared with the LV. However, no relationship between the volume of conditioning activity (CA) and the optimal time point to obtain the maximum potentiation effect was determined. Strength and conditioning professionals are advised to analyze individual PAP responses in terms of the optimal recovery time with regard to different CA configurations. © 2015 National Strength and Conditioning Association