Effects of forearm wearable resistance during accelerated sprints: From a standing start position

ABSTRACT

Fusiform weighted garments enable specific loading strategies during sport-specific movements. Loading the arms over during accelerated sprinting from a 2-point start position is pertinent to a variety of sporting performances. Fourteen sprint-trained individuals (age = 20.61 ± 1.16 years; height = 1.73 m ± 3.85 cm; body mass 65.33 ± 4.86 kg; personal best 100-m race time 11.40 ± 0.39 s) performed unloaded/loaded wearable resistance (WR) sprints. Between-condition step kinematics and kinetics were compared over four acceleration phases: steps 1–4, 5–8, 9–12 and 13–16. Sprint performance did not differ between unloaded and loaded WR at 10-m (−1.41%; ES = −0.32), or 30-m (−0.76%; ES = −0.24). Sprinting with forearm WR significantly decreased step frequency during phase two (p < 0.05, −3.42%; ES = −0.81) and three (−3.60%; ES = −0.86) and step velocity during phase four of the 30 m sprinting task (p < 0.05, −3.61%; ES: 0.91) only. There were no significant differences (p ≤ 0.05) between step kinetics amongst the two conditions. Findings indicate that arm-loaded WR may provide specific sprinting overload for 2-point starting positions. This may be relevant to a wider sporting context such as field and team sport performances.

KEYWORDS:

• Wearable resistance
• performance
• athletes
• training

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

Professor John Cronin holds the position of Head of Research at Lila Movement Technology, the manufacturer of the wearable resistance garment used in this study. However, Professor Cronin is an academic researcher first and was blinded from the data collection and analysis.