(2) HOW CAN STRENGTH & CONDITIONING SESSIONS IMPROVE ATHLETE MOTIVATION AND PERFORMANCE? A COMPARISON OF STRONGMAN SESSION DESIGN

Athletes need to be highly motivated to train at the required frequency, intensity, and volume to enable favourable physiological adaptations.  In group settings, it is important to consider the role socioenvironmental influence might have in diminishing or strengthening athlete motivation.

Purpose:

The purpose of this study was to compare five strongman strength and conditioning (S&C) session designs (i.e., 1. Individual, 2. Working in pairs, 3. Working in pairs with stronger partner, 4. Leader board with no feedback, 5. Leader board with feedback) on athlete motivation and performance.

Methods:

Twenty-four semi-professional rugby union players completed five strongman S&C sessions.  Performance was measured by the number of repetitions completed during sixty seconds for the keg swing and sledgehammer strike exercises.  Motivation was assessed pre and post training via a questionnaire.  To compare between the five session designs, a repeated measures analysis of variance was undertaken along with Cohen’s d effect sizes between each session (e.g., 1v2, 1v3, 2v3).

Results:

Table 1 shows an overall significant effect was found for change in motivation, and motivation between the session designs.  Session 2 (paired), 3 (prescribed pair), and 5 (leader board with feedback) demonstrated significantly greater (very large effect sizes) motivation than session 1 (individual) and session 4 (leader board with no feedback).

For sledgehammer strikes and keg swings, overall significant differences were found across the session designs.  Session 5 (leader board with feedback) produced the highest performance with no significant differences identified across the other four designs.  However, effect sizes showed medium effect size (0.9) for session two, large (1.8) for session three, large (1.6) for session four and very large for session five versus session one for sledgehammer strikes.  For keg swings very large effect sizes were seen across all sessions (2.4) for session two, (3.5) session three, (2.4) session four, and (4.6) for session five versus session one.

Conclusions:

The current findings demonstrate that athlete motivation and strongman performance can be enhanced by manipulating the design of a strongman S&C session. Working in pairs or using a leader board with feedback produced enhanced motivation and performance compared to working alone or using a leader board without feedback.

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS:


These finding suggest than planning and delivering S&C sessions that consider the socioenvironmental design of the session including ways to enhance motivation should be recommended for coaches to enhance athlete motivation and potentially improve physiological performance.

Acknowledgements: None