Acute and chronic effects of plyometric exercise performed with hypoxia on post-activation performance enhancement (PAPE)

TL;DR

This study examines how performing plyometric exercises in hypoxic conditions affects short-term and long-term athletic performance improvements.

Contribution

The study is the first to investigate both acute and chronic effects of hypoxic plyometric exercise on post-activation performance enhancement.

Findings

Acute hypoxic plyometric exercise did not improve post-activation performance enhancement.

Eight weeks of high-normobaric hypoxic plyometric training significantly improved jump height during post-activation performance.

Normoxic conditions showed significant acute performance enhancement, but not under hypoxic conditions.

Abstract

In the literature, no study is available either to investigate the effects of conditioning activity (CA) applied in hypoxic conditions on post-activation performance enhancement (PAPE) or to examine whether hypoxic long-term training can affect PAPE. This study aims to test the effects of plyometric exercise applied under hypoxia on PAPE, which is the acute effect; and to test the same effect again after an 8-week plyometric training, which is a potential chronic effect on the acute performance improvement after an adaptation with training. Nineteen team-sports athletes received 8-week drop-jump (DJ) training in Low-Normobaric Hypoxia (Low-NH, n = 8), Normobaric-Normoxia (NN, n = 6), or High-Normobaric Hypoxia (High-NH, n = 5) conditions (SpO2 of 90%, 97–100%, and 80%, respectively) two times per week. PAPE was tested at the 2nd and 4th minutes of recovery after normoxic and hypoxic CA with 1x5 DJs at the pre-test, and tested after an 8-week training period following a normoxic and hypoxic CA with 1x8 DJs at the post-test. As a result of repeated measures ANOVA to identify the acute effects, only under normoxic conditions, DJ-height was significantly higher in the 2nd (31.7 ± 4.9 cm) and 4th minute (31.6 ± 4.3 cm) than baseline (30.1 ± 4.7 cm) (p < 0.05). Regarding the chronic-effect results, only the High-NH group significantly increased DJ-height from baseline (31.6 ± 4.5 cm) to the 2nd (33.7 ± 5.9 cm) and 4th minutes (34.5 ± 4.6 cm) (p < 0.05), without testing condition (hypoxic/normoxic) separately, at the end of the 8-week training period. It is concluded that plyometrics with acute hypoxic CA have no beneficial effect on PAPE responses, but 8 weeks of plyometric training with normobaric hypoxia may lead to an adaptation to induce improved PAPE.

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