Acute effects of back squat and barbell hip thrust post-activation performance enhancement protocols on jumping, change-of-direction, and sprint performance in male collegiate basketball athletes

Purpose To compare the acute effects of resistance-based warm-up protocols using the back squat (BS) and barbell hip thrust (BHT) with a basketball-specific control condition (CON) on jump, change-of-direction, and short-distance sprint performance in male collegiate basketball players. Methods In a randomized crossover design, 20 participants completed BS, BHT, and CON. The BS and BHT conditioning activities comprised 4 sets of 3 repetitions at 80% of one-repetition maximum, with 90 s of interset rest. After 8 min of passive recovery, participants completed the countermovement jump (CMJ), squat jump (SJ), approach vertical jump (AVJ), standing long jump (SLJ), Hexagon jump test, T-test, and a 20-m sprint with 0–10 m and 10–20 m splits. Conditions were compared using one-way repeated-measures analysis of variance. Greenhouse-Geisser correction was applied when sphericity was violated, Holm adjustment controlled multiplicity across the eight outcomes, and Bonferroni adjustment was used for follow-up pairwise comparisons. Results Protocol effects remained significant after Holm adjustment for CMJ, F(1.49, 28.33) = 11.626, p < 0.001, Holm-adjusted p = 0.005, ηp² = 0.380; AVJ, F(2, 38) = 6.681, p = 0.003, Holm-adjusted p = 0.022, ηp² = 0.260; and SLJ, F(2, 38) = 5.798, p = 0.006, Holm-adjusted p = 0.038, ηp² = 0.234. Bonferroni-adjusted comparisons showed greater CMJ after BS than BHT (p = 0.002) and CON (p = 0.021), greater AVJ after BS than BHT (p = 0.047) and CON (p < 0.001), and greater SLJ after BS than CON (p = 0.020). Protocol effects were not statistically significant for SJ (p = 0.109), Hexagon jump test (p = 0.849), T-test (p = 0.713), 0–10 m sprint time (p = 0.756), or 10–20 m sprint time (p = 0.615). No BHT-CON comparison reached statistical significance; this finding does not establish equivalence between conditions. Conclusions In the tested male collegiate players, the specified BS protocol was followed by higher CMJ, AVJ, and SLJ values in selected comparisons. Interpretation is limited to the tested load, recovery period, assessments, and fixed test order, which confounded outcome type with time elapsed after the conditioning activity.