Combined Effects of Plyometric and Endurance Training Among Female Hockey Players

Overview

Athletes need plyometric training as well as endurance training to enhance their speed, strength and agility in the field. Plyometric exercise involves stretching the muscle immediately before making a rapid concentric contraction. The combined action is commonly called a stretch-shortening cycle (SSC). Similar gains of maximal strength have been reported with traditional strength and plyometric training, but the latter approach appears to induce greater gains in muscle power. The combination of balance and muscle strength/power exercises seems to be an appropriate possibility, since both modalities induced adaptation on the neuromuscular level. A blocked combination of balance and muscle strength exercises effectively improve physical performance, and improvements in performance are more pronounced if balance exercises are followed by strength exercises than vice versa.

Strength and endurance training are often done concurrently by fitness enthusiasts and athletes. Concurrent strength and endurance training however, result in "antagonism" of the training responses. Combined strength and endurance training in previously untrained subjects has developed strength impairment in comparison to strength training alone, whereas endurance development, expressed as increases in maximal aerobic power has not been impaired. A combination of some forms of strength and endurance training maybe "addictive" rather than antagonistic. Some endurance training programs have increases strength and muscle fiber size. A randomized controlled trial will be conducted. Non-probability convenient sampling technique will be used. Study will be carried in hockey clubs at Lahore. Only female players of age 18-24 with one year experience in hockey, only players who will participate in all training sessions will be included in the statistical analysis. Participants with the history of systemic disease, with history of lower extremity and lumber spine pathology, with prior surgery history and participants having injuries resulting in loss of one or more hockey matches/ training sessions in the preceding three months prior to the initiation of the study will be excluded. Three groups will be included in the study each containing 10 participants. Group A will be given plyometric training for 12 weeks, Group B will be given endurance training for 12 weeks and Group C will be given both trainings for 12 weeks. Pre-training values will be taken prior training. Mid-training values will be taken after 6 weeks of training and post-training values will be taken after training.