Effects of Static and Dynamic Post-Activation Potentiation Protocols on Change of Direction Performance in Adolescent Soccer Players

Summary Purpose: The study aimed to investigate the temporal effects of static and dynamic post-activation potentiation (PAP) conditioning activities on agility performance. Material and Methods: Fourteen male adolescent soccer players participated in the study. Participants performed three different conditioning activities randomly on non-consecutive days. Conditioning activities consisted of static, dynamic, and control protocols. The dynamic protocol was performed with the dynamic squat at 85% of 1-repetition maximum while the static protocol was performed 3 repetitions x 3 seconds of the isometric squat. The control protocol only completed a standardized warm-up. After the baseline measurements were taken, all protocols completed the agility test in 15th seconds, 2,4,6,8,10,12,14th minutes. Repeated measures in ANOVA were used to determine differences between PAP protocols and the Bonferroni post hoc test was employed to determine which protocol caused a significant difference. Results: There was no significant difference between protocols in baseline (p<.925, ηp2 = 0.006), however, the control protocol caused a significant difference in 15th seconds and 2nd minutes compared to static and dynamic protocols (p<.001, ηp2 = 0.73, 0.72, respectively). In the 4th and 6th minutes static and dynamic protocols caused a significant difference compared to control (p<.001, ηp2 = 0.46-0.89, respectively), and in the 8th-minute static and dynamic protocols reached the peak performance (p<.001, ηp2 = 0.96). Although in the 10-12-14th minutes static and dynamic protocols’ performance values gradually reduced. However, they always were better compared to the control protocol (p<.001, ηp2 = 0.91-0.93-0.96, respectively). Conclusions: Adolescent soccer players can benefit from both static and dynamic PAP protocols before competition or halftime to improve performance.