TY - JOUR A1 - Chaouachi, Mehdi A1 - Granacher, Urs A1 - Makhlouf, Issam A1 - Hammami, Raouf A1 - Behm, David G. A1 - Chaouachi, Anis T1 - Within Session Sequence of Balance and Plyometric Exercises Does Not Affect Training Adaptations with Youth Soccer Athletes JF - Journal of sports science & medicine N2 - The integration of balance and plyometric training has been shown to provide significant improvements in sprint, jump, agility, and other performance measures in young athletes. It is not known if a specific within session balance and plyometric exercise sequence provides more effective training adaptations. The objective of the present study was to investigate the effects of using a sequence of alternating pairs of exercises versus a block (series) of all balance exercises followed by a block of plyometric exercises on components of physical fitness such as muscle strength, power, speed, agility, and balance. Twenty-six male adolescent soccer players ( 13.9 +/- 0.3 years) participated in an 8-week training program that either alternated individual balance (e. g., exercises on unstable surfaces) and plyometric (e. g., jumps, hops, rebounds) exercises or performed a block of balance exercises prior to a block of plyometric exercises within each training session. Pre- and post-training measures included proxies of strength, power, agility, sprint, and balance such as countermovement jumps, isometric back and knee extension strength, standing long jump, 10 and 30-m sprints, agility, standing stork, and Y-balance tests. Both groups exhibited significant, generally large magnitude (effect sizes) training improvements for all measures with mean performance increases of approximately > 30%. There were no significant differences between the training groups over time. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of combining balance and plyometric exercises within a training session on components of physical fitness with young adolescents. The improved performance outcomes were not significantly influenced by the within session exercise sequence. KW - Power KW - strength KW - jumps KW - sprints KW - balance KW - children Y1 - 2017 SN - 1303-2968 VL - 16 SP - 125 EP - 136 PB - Department of Sports Medicine, Medical Faculty of Uludag University CY - Bursa ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hammami, Raouf A1 - Granacher, Urs A1 - Makhlouf, Issam A1 - Behm, David George A1 - Chaouachi, Anis T1 - SEQUENCING EFFECTS OF BALANCE AND PLYOMETRIC TRAINING ON PHYSICAL PERFORMANCE IN YOUTH SOCCER ATHLETES JF - Journal of strength and conditioning research : the research journal of the NSCA N2 - Balance training may have a preconditioning effect on subsequent power training with youth. There are no studies examining whether the sequencing of balance and plyometric training has additional training benefits. The objective was to examine the effect of sequencing balance and plyometric training on the performance of 12- to 13-year-old athletes. Twenty-four young elite soccer players trained twice per week for 8 weeks either with an initial 4 weeks of balance training followed by 4 weeks of plyometric training (BPT) or 4 weeks of plyometric training proceeded by 4 weeks of balance training (PBT). Testing was conducted pre- and posttraining and included medicine ball throw; horizontal and vertical jumps; reactive strength; leg stiffness; agility; 10-, 20-, and 30-m sprints; Standing Stork balance test; and Y-Balance test. Results indicated that BPT provided significantly greater improvements with reactive strength index, absolute and relative leg stiffness, triple hop test, and a trend for the Y-Balance test (p = 0.054) compared with PBT. Although all other measures had similar changes for both groups, the average relative improvement for the BPT was 22.4% (d = 1.5) vs. 15.0% (d = 1.1) for the PBT. BPT effect sizes were greater with 8 of 13 measures. In conclusion, although either sequence of BPT or PBT improved jumping, hopping, sprint acceleration, and Standing Stork and Y-Balance, BPT initiated greater training improvements in reactive strength index, absolute and relative leg stiffness, triple hop test, and the Y-Balance test. BPT may provide either similar or superior performance enhancements compared with PBT. KW - children KW - adolescents KW - power KW - jumps KW - sprints Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0000000000001425 SN - 1064-8011 SN - 1533-4287 VL - 30 SP - 3278 EP - 3289 PB - Elsevier CY - Philadelphia ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Chaouachi, Anis A1 - Ben Othman, Aymen A1 - Makhlouf, Issam A1 - Young, James D. A1 - Granacher, Urs A1 - Behm, David George T1 - Global Training Effects of Trained and Untrained Muscles With Youth Can be Maintained During 4 Weeks of Detraining JF - Journal of strength and conditioning research : the research journal of the NSCA N2 - Global (whole-body) effects of resistance training (i.e., cross-education) may be pervasive with children. Detraining induces less substantial deficits with children than adults. It was the objective of this study to investigate the global responses to 4 weeks of detraining after 8 weeks of unilateral leg press (LP) training in 10-13-year-old, pre-peak-height-velocity stage boys. Subjects were randomly separated into 2 unilateral resistance training groups (high load/low repetitions [HL-LR] and low load/high repetitions [LL-HR], and control group). Assessments at pre-training, post-training, and detraining included dominant and nondominant limbs, unilateral, 1 repetition maximum (1RM) and 60% 1RM LP, knee extension, knee flexion, elbow flexion, and handgrip maximal voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC), and countermovement jump (CMJ). All measures significantly increased from pre-test to detraining for both training programs, except for elbow flexion MVIC with increases only with HL-LR. All measures except CMJ and handgrip MVIC significantly decreased from post-test to detraining, except for elbow flexion MVIC with decreases only with HL-LR. The dominant trained limb experienced significantly greater LP improvements (pre- to detraining) and decrements (post- to detraining) with LP 1RM and 60% 1RM LP. In conclusion, youth HL-LR and LL-HR global training effects of trained and untrained limbs demonstrate similar benefits (pre- to detraining) and decrements (post- to detraining) with detraining. The findings emphasize that training any muscle group in a child can have positive global implications for improved strength and power that can persist over baseline measures for at least a month. KW - adolescents KW - strength training KW - deconditioning KW - cross-education KW - children Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0000000000002606 SN - 1064-8011 SN - 1533-4287 VL - 33 IS - 10 SP - 2788 EP - 2800 PB - Lippincott Williams & Wilkins CY - Philadelphia ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hammami, Raouf A1 - Chaouachi, Anis A1 - Makhlouf, Issam A1 - Granacher, Urs A1 - Behm, David George T1 - Associations Between Balance and Muscle Strength, Power Performance in Male Youth Athletes of Different Maturity Status JF - Pediatric exercise science N2 - Balance, strength and power relationships may contain important information at various maturational stages to determine training priorities. Purpose: The objective was to examine maturity-specific relationships of static/dynamic balance with strength and power measures in young male athletes. Method: Soccer players (N = 130) aged 10-16 were assessed with the Stork and Y balance (YBT) tests. Strength/power measures included back extensor muscle strength, standing long jump (SLJ), countermovement jump (CMJ), and 3-hop jump tests. Associations between balance with strength/power variables were calculated according to peak-height-velocity (PHV). Results: There were significant medium-large sized correlations between all balance measures with back extensor strength (r =.486.791) and large associations with power (r =.511.827). These correlation coefficients were significantly different between pre-PHV and circa PHV as well as pre-PHV and post-PHV with larger associations in the more mature groups. Irrespective of maturity-status, SLJ was the best strength/ power predictor with the highest proportion of variance (12-47%) for balance (i.e., Stork eyes opened) and the YBT was the best balance predictor with the highest proportion of variance (43-78%) for all strength/ power variables. Conclusion: The associations between balance and muscle strength/power measures in youth athletes that increase with maturity may imply transfer effects from balance to strength/power training and vice versa in youth athletes. KW - children KW - adolescents KW - training KW - peak height velocity KW - relationships Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1123/pes.2015-0231 SN - 0899-8493 SN - 1543-2920 VL - 28 SP - 521 EP - 534 PB - Human Kinetics Publ. CY - Champaign ER -