Abstract
Plyometrics is known to enhance explosive performance in power, vertical jump and sprinting speed however, an increase in injury is prevalent. Aquatic plyometrics elicits identical improvements to land based plyometrics with a reduction of muscle soreness. Few studies exist that examine the effect of aquatic plyometric training. Only three focus on adolescent athletes. With the majority of plyometric research studies focusing primarily on adults and even less on adolescents in aquatic plyometrics the purpose of the current study emerged. Methods: Thirty-one subjects were stratified randomly to the two training groups; land based plyometrics and aquatic plyometrics. The subjects were equally placed within the two groups. Each subject performed a vertical jump height test, 20m sprint, 10 meter block start and reported muscle soreness via a Likert type scale. All of variables were measured at the same time of day at Monterey Trail High School for each testing period. Results: Muscle soreness from the pre, mid, and post muscle soreness test showed that no significant difference existed between the land and the aquatic groups F (1, 24) = 2.349, = .138, partial η2 .089. Vertical jump heights were comparable between the aquatic groups pre (M = 24.5, SD = 4.06) and post test (M = 24.73, SD = 3.9) to the land based groups pre (M = 23.23, SD = 5.09) and post test measurements (M = 23.46, SD = 5.32), t (25) = -2.90, p = .008 (two tailed). The results from the pre 10 meter block showed that no significant difference exists between the aquatic and land group F(1,24) = .947, p = .340, partial η2 .038 on the pre. The results showed that the aquatic and land based plyometric groups were significantly different on the post block scores F(1,24) = 5.538, p <.05, partial η2 .990. The results from the pre 20 meter sprints showed no difference between the two groups, land and aquatic F(1, 24) = 3.056, p = .093 partial η2 .113. Conclusion: The results of the present study demonstrated that after 6 weeks of plyometric training the response found in aquatic and land based training had similar values in vertical jump, 20 meter sprint and muscle soreness with an exception on the post test scores for the 10 meter block sprint. There were no differences between the two groups on three of the four variables, indicating that both forms of training were effective.