How Vibration Exercises Improve Sprint Performance in Cyclists
Professional athletes need to take measures to improve their strength and flexibility to improve their performance. Post activation potentiation (PAP) is one of the most effective measures, adopted by professional athletes to increase their performance. It includes practicing intense exercises as preconditioning. It can be explained as the phenomenon by which the force exerted by a muscle is increased due to its previous contraction.
While fatiguing muscle contractions impair muscle performance, the non-fatiguing muscle contractions at high loads for a brief duration contribute to improving muscle performance. The PAP training method helps an athlete’s body to get used to higher intensity so that the actual competition wouldn’t feel more demanding physically, thus improving the performance.
The preconditioning process includes intense workouts to train the muscles as per the requirements of the actual competition. It can also consist of the same movements that the athlete will need to do during the competition. The preconditioning method with PAP training aims to target and prepare the muscles that will be used during the game, and athletes can practice a variety of exercises during the preconditioning phase to prepare themselves for the competition.
Researchers have concluded that whole body vibration exercises using medical-grade vibration machines are an effective form of physical activity to be adopted for PAP purposes. Cyclists must improve their sprinting ability to perform better during competitions. The research concluded that performing PAP whole body vibration exercises resulted in superior peak power output among cyclists, which contributes to their improved sprint performance.
It is further concluded that the whole vibration training as a preconditioning method was more beneficial in improving the sprint performance of well-trained cyclists and should be included as an integral form of training in their routine to improve their performance for the competition.
Power Plate vibration devices are widely used by athletes for warming up, performance improvement, and cooling down.
Why do athletes use the Power Plate device for whole body vibration exercises?
Power Plate is a medical-graded, scientifically-proven device to aid whole body vibration exercises. Designed to activate the body’s natural reflexive response to vibration, it is used by athletes to accelerate their training results, to prevent and to recover faster from injuries. Its vibration platform vibrates in multiple directions (up and down, left to right, and front to back) simultaneously, which naturally works your muscle harder without putting stress on the joints and ligaments.
Traditional exercises cause muscle contractions 1 to 2 times per second, whereas Power Plate causes muscles to contract and relax up to 50 times per second. It is scientifically proven that whole body vibration exercises on Power Plate speed up health and fitness benefits to provide faster and more efficient results.
When you adopt whole body vibration exercise as a preconditioning method before the competition, it results in enhanced muscular performance due to higher muscle contractions. Its highly positive result in activating muscle fibers makes it suitable to be included in PAP.