The acute effects of different stretching exercises on the power and agility of adolescent football players

Abstract

The aim of this study was to compare the acute effects of static and dynamic stretching exercises on the power and agility of adolescent male football players. Ten male football players (age 15.8 ± 1.47 years, height 1.66 ± 0.05 m, body weight 59.6 ± 10.7 kg, training age 3 ± 1.94 years) from a team competing in the Bitlis 1st Amateur Group B of the 2019/20 season voluntarily participated in the study. All subjects participated in control (warm-up only), static stretching (warm-up + static stretching) and dynamic stretching (warm-up + dynamic stretching) exercise groups, respectively, on non-consecutive days. All groups were given 10-minute warm-up exercises. After warming up, the control group was given 10 minutes of passive rest. For the main muscle groups, 10 minutes of static stretching was applied to one of the other two groups, and 10 minutes of dynamic stretching exercises were applied to the other. After 1-2 minutes of rest, T-drill, medicine ball throwing and vertical jump test measurements were taken from the athletes, respectively. The obtained data were analyzed statistically and the level of significance was determined as p<0.05. As a result of the research, while there was no significant difference between acute static stretching and dynamic stretching in terms of power performance, a significant difference was found in favor of dynamic stretching in agility performance.