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Abstract Hill, V, Patterson, S, Buckthorpe, M, and Legg, HS. The acute effects of a preload upper-body power exercise on 50-m freestyle performance in youth swimmers. J Strength Cond Res 38(7): 1295–1299, 2024—This study aimed to investigate the acute effects of a medicine ball slam and the optimal recovery time required to induce a postactivation performance enhancement (PAPE) response on 50-meter freestyle swimming performance. Twenty-four (13 female, 11 male) competitive, adolescent swimmers (mean ± SD : age, 16.7 ± 1.2 years; height, 173.3 ± 6.7 cm; mass, 63.1 ± 6.4 kg) participated in a randomized crossover study. After the PAPE intervention (3 × 5 medicine ball slams), subjects had 1-minute, 4-minute, and 8-minute recovery periods before a 50-m maximal freestyle swim. A 1-way repeated-measures ANOVA revealed that different recovery times elicited changes in 50-m performance ( F = 12.12, p < 0.0005). After 4 minutes of recovery, 50-m performance was 1.6% (0.47 seconds) faster (95% confidence interval CI 0.17–0.77, p < 0.001). When the data were split by sex, after 4 minutes of recovery, 50-m performance was 2% (0.64 seconds) faster for women (95% CI 0.279–0.998, p < 0.001). In conclusion, an upper-body power exercise, before performance, can induce a PAPE response and enhance 50-m freestyle performance after a 4-minute recovery period.
Hill et al. (Thu,) studied this question.