Acute effect of squat training at different loads on the performance of the lifts to exhaustion in young weightlifters

The main goal of the applied training is to improve a number of specific characteristics of the athletes in order to achieve better performance and greater success in their sport branch. The aim of this study was to investigate the acute effects of squat exercises applied at different loads on shrug performance until exhaustion in young weightlifting athletes. For this purpose, a total of 12 volunteer athletes who were active weightlifting athletes (age; 17.4 ± 0.52 years; height; 1.75 ± 0.1 body weight; 87.7 ± 25.79) participated in the study. After a weightlifting-specific warm-up, the athletes performed 10 repetitions of bottom squat with body weight, 3 repetitions with 90% or 8 repetitions of front bottom squat with 50% after rest, 4 minutes of rest, and all athletes performed the shrug performance until exhaustion. At the end of the research, SPSS 22.0 package programme was used to statistically analyse the data. Shapiro-Wilk test for normality test and Levene test for homogeneity test were applied. Skewness and kurtosis values were checked for data sets that did not show normal distribution, and data sets within ±2 were considered to show normal distribution. Two-way analysis of variance (2x3) was used to analyse the differences between the treatments. As a result, a statistically highly significant difference was found in the number of pre-bottom squat repetitions between the 1st and 2nd measurements in all treatments of the subjects. The results of the application revealed that carefully determined squat training protocols caused favourable changes in the performance of the shrug to exhaustion in young weightlifters. The observed increases in repetition counts and favourable changes in performance among the participants suggest that squat exercise has the potential to influence the short-term performance of young weightlifters.