Effects of different ischemic preconditioning protocols on sprint swimming speed: a crossover study

This study aimed to analyze the acute effects of different ischemic preconditioning (IPC) protocols on 100-m freestyle swimming performance. This crossover clinical trial included 12 male competitive swimmers (16.2 ± 1.5 years) who were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions: (1) IPC applied to the upper limbs (IPC-UL), (2) IPC applied to the lower limbs (IPC-LL), (3) IPC applied to both upper and lower limbs (IPC-UL/LL), and (4) a control condition (IPC-CONT). No statistically significant differences were observed in swimming performance between the IPC protocols and the control condition ( P = 0.063). Descriptive individual analysis indicated that a proportion of athletes exhibited small reductions in race time following IPC-UL (66%) and IPC-LL (83%) compared with the control condition. However, these individual changes should be interpreted cautiously, as they are exploratory in nature and may fall within the expected variability associated with manual timing and day-to-day performance fluctuations.