The effect of the horizontal vs. vertical PAPE protocol on the swim start performance in adolescent male

Post-activation performance enhancement (PAPE) is referred to enhancement in muscular performance due to high-intensity voluntary contractions. This study aimed to examine the effect of the horizontal vs. vertical PAPE protocol on the start performance in swimming. Sixteen swimmers (age: 13.71 ± 0.95 years; height: 169.43 ± 9.68 cm; body mass: 58.47 ± 7.64 kg) performed three warm-up protocols: (i) a swim-specific warm-up (SWU); (ii) back squat (BS) followed SWU (SWUB); (iii) barbell hip thrust (BHT) followed SWU (SWUH) which consisted of 1 set of 3 reps at 80% 1RM. Rest times are evaluated individually. The findings of this study indicate that SWUB has no beneficial effect on any phase in all examined parameters, while SWUH has a slight improvement only in the take-off phase compared to SWUB (p < 0.05). BHT is better compared to BS as a PAPE stimulus for swimming, but there is no positive effect on 50 m swimming time compared to SWU (p > 0.05). In conclusion, to the best of our knowledge, the effect of BHT as a PAPE stimulus was investigated for swimming for the first time, but results show that neither BS nor BHT has a positive effect on 50 m swimming performance.