The effect of post-activation potentiation effect (PAPE) on snatch performance to exhaustion in elite weightlifters

The aim of this study was to investigate the acute effect of post activation potentiation on snatch performance until exhaustion in elite level weightlifting athletes. For this purpose, a total of 12 elite level (age; 18.45 ± 0.52 years; height; 1.73 ± 0.03 body weight; 71.36 ± 11.36) volunteer athletes participated in the study. Weightlifting athletes were applied a snatch protocol suitable for their own technique. After 5 minutes of general warm-up, five minutes of weightlifting-specific warm-up was performed and two minutes of rest was provided. Then, athletes were randomly assigned to three applications and PAPE protocols were applied. SPSS package programme (SPSS for Windows, version 22.0, SPSS Inc., Chicago, Illinois, USA) was used for statistical analysis of the data obtained at the end of the study. Shapiro-Wilk test was applied for normality test and Levene's test was applied for homogeneity test. Repeated measures two-way analysis of variance (2x3) was used to analyse the differences between treatments. Greenhouse Geiser correction test was used in the measurements where the assumption of sphericity was not met. Statistical results were evaluated at p<0.05 significance levels. According to the findings, a statistically highly significant difference was found in favour of PAPE in the number of repetitions between measurements in all applications of the athletes (p=0.003, F=18.000). As a result, it was determined that the participants showed a significant improvement in the snatch technique after PAPE application. This improvement was measured as an increase in performance in the snatch movement until exhaustion as well as improvement in technique.