Researchers at the University of Idaho looked into the effects of doing two specific activities before performing maximal sprints. The two preconditioning activities they looked into were power cleans and whole-body vibration. (Check out this article on Vibration Plates if you are not fimilar with them – overpriced machines that don’t need to be included in an athletic setting if you ask me). The idea behind performing either of these two activities before sprinting is that they will heighten or excite the neuromuscular system which would positively effect your sprint time. With a relatively low sample size, the researchers found that neither of these techniques were beneficial for improving your sprint times. (Of course incorporating Power Cleans and other Olympic Lifts over an entire training period would be extrememly beneficial for improving your lower body and thus sprint time. However, doing a couple sets right before a sprint doesn’t help your performance). The best explanation they gave for these results was that the preconditioning activities were not specific enough to the actually activity (sprinting). Standing on a vibration plate or doing a couple sets of power cleans looks nothing like sprinting. The researchers suggested that doing a preconditioning activity such as “overspeed training” may be more beneficial for decreasing sprint times. “Overspeed training is where an athlete is towed behind another runner in an attempt to achieve sprint speeds greater than those obtained via regular sprinting.” This would obviously be much more specific than vibration training or Olympic Lifting.
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