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Biomechanics/Neuromuscular

(09) THE IMPACT OF LEARNING EFFECT ON THE ASSESSMENT OF LOWER-BODY NEUROMUSCULAR PERFORMANCE CHARACTERISTICS

Thursday, July 11, 2024
1:00 PM – 1:15 PM East Coast USA Time
Location: Room 337-338
Abstract Details: One of the reoccurring questions that arises during the countermovement vertical jump (CVJ) assessment is whether the learning effect has an impact on the accuracy of the baseline results obtained.

Purpose: Thus, the purpose of the present investigation was to examine the impact of the learning effect on the assessment of lower-body neuromuscular performance characteristics when performed on a portable force plate system.

Methods: Sixteen college-age males (age=20.7±1.8 years; hheight=184.1±6.7 cm; body mass=83.1±8.3 kg) volunteered to participate in the present study. Each participant completed four sets of three non-consecutive CVJs with no arm swing while standing on a force plate system (VALD, ForceDecks, Queensland, Australia) sampling at 1000Hz. Besides strong verbal encouragement, participants were constantly instructed to focus on pushing the ground as explosively as possible. Fourteen force-time metrics were selected for CVJ performance analysis purposes: eccentric and concentric peak and mean force and power, eccentric and concentric duration, contraction time, jump height, reactive strength index-modified, and countermovement depth. Repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to examine statistically significant differences across four testing time points (p< 0.05).

Results: The results indicated an absence of any meaningful differences across four testing time points in force-time metrics of interest during both eccentric and concentric phases of the CVJ. Moreover, no differences were observed in CVJ outcome metrics such as countermovement depth and vertical jump height, suggesting that the movement strategy tends to remain consistent.

Conclusions: Thus, familiarization trials may not be necessary when testing the performance of movements such as CVJ, which are commonly integrated into many daily physical activities. In addition, another important factor that could have contributed to the absence of the learning effect observed in the present study is the administration of adequate and standardized cues throughout the testing sessions, which allowed participants to perform CVJ movement more consistently. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: Overall, these findings can help sports practitioners obtain a better understanding of the impact of learning effect on CVJ performance and therefore optimize the testing and training protocols for athletes and individuals engaging in similar types of physical activities.

Acknowledgements: Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance