Acute Effect of Whole-Body Vibration on Sprint and Jumping Performance in Elite Skeleton Athletes

Abstract

The winter sliding sport known as skeleton requires athletes to produce a maximal sprint followed by high speed sliding down a bobsled track. Athletes are required to complete the course twice in 1 hour and total time for the 2 runs determines overall ranking. The purpose of this investigation was to examine the effect of whole-body vibration (WBV) on lower body power to explore the utility of WBV as an ergogenic aid for skeleton competition. Elite skeleton athletes (1 male and 6 females) completed an unloaded squat jump (SQJ) immediately followed by 2 countermovement jumps (CMJs) and a maximal 30-m sprint before and after WBV or no vibration (CON) using a crossover design. The second 30-m sprint was slower following both CON (1.4% decrement; p = 0.05) and WBV (0.7% decrement; p = 0.03). Mean vertical velocity was maintained following WBV in the SQJ but decreased following CON (p = 0.03). There was a trend for athletes to commence the SQJ from a higher starting stance post-WBV compared to CON (p = 0.08). WBV decreased total vertical distance traveled compared to CON in the SQJ (p = 0.006). WBV had little effect on peak velocity, jump height, dip, and peak acceleration or any CMJ parameters. When sprint athletes' warm up and perform maximal jumps and a 30-m sprint with 15-20 minutes of recovery before repeating the sequence, the second series of performances tend to be compromised. However, when WBV is used before the second series of efforts, some aspects of maximal jumping and sprinting appear to be influenced in a beneficial manner. Further research is required to explore whether WBV can improve the second sprint for athletes in actual competition and/or what sort of WBV protocol is optimal for these populations.

Effectiveness of Different Rest Intervals Following Whole-Body Vibration on Vertical Jump Performance between College Athletes and Recreationally Trained Females

“…It has been shown to improve upper and lower body muscular activity in both trained and untrained individuals [7,[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. Previous research indicates WBV exposure at a moderate intensity is safe and effective in stimulating the neuromuscular system [4] and has been shown to induce non-voluntary muscle contractions [17].…”

“…Power output is a key variable for sports performance and previous research have shown an increase in power production by facilitation of an explosive strength effort [9,18,19] leading to augmentation of performance via muscular strength and motor function [20,21]. Bouts of WBV exposure have also been seen to improve sprinting and jumping performance [5,8,10,22,23], with little or no effort by the individuals [24]. Although many studies has shown positive effects, there are several studies have shown no performance enhancements following WBV [5,7,12,[25][26][27], resulting in inconsistency in previous literature.…”

“…Therefore, to increase performance variables, optimal rest intervals are critical when utilizing whole-body vibration. Previous research have shown conflicting results using varying rest intervals following acute bouts of WBV, from immediately post to 10 min [5,8,10,12,22,23,35,36]. To our knowledge there is no current literature that has investigated this vibration protocol with these specific rest times comparing athletes versus non-athletes.…”

Whole Body Vibration: A Revolutionary Mode of Exercise or A Trend?

“…An acute bout of WBV using either side-to-side alternating or vertical simultaneous vibrations have shown to increase [13][14][15] or not change [16][17][18] vertical jumping ability, strength and/ or balance. However, a 9.1% reduction in counter movement jump and/or strength has also been reported after exhaustive or prolonged WBV exercise [19].…”

Analysis of trunk and lower extremity electromyographic activity in horizontal whole-body vibration

“…The vibration stimulus provided by the WBV device has been reported to induce cyclic, isolated, and isometric maximal voluntary contractions (MVCs) and promote a neuromuscular response, which varies with several variables such as frequency, amplitude, acceleration, and duration (Cardinale & Erskine, 2008;Rittweger, 2010). Thus, it has been suggested that the vibration stimulus can contribute to high levels of reflex sensitivity, motor neuron excitability, stiffer muscle-tendon units, and betterment of body movement functions for task performance (Bullock et al, 2008;Delecluse et al, 2005).…”