Muscle activation history at different vertical jumps and its influence on vertical velocity

In the present study we investigated displacement, time, velocity and acceleration history of center of mass (COM) and electrical activity of knee extensors to estimate the dominance of the factors influencing the vertical velocity in squat jumps (SJs), countermovement jumps (CMJs) and drop jumps (DJs) performed with small (40°) and large (80°) range of joint motion (SROM and LROM). The maximum vertical velocity (v4) was 23.4% (CMJ) and 7.8% (DJ) greater when the jumps were performed with LROM compared with SROM (p < 0.05). These differences are considerably less than it could be expected from the greater COM and knee angular displacement and duration of active state. This small difference can be attributed to the greater deceleration during eccentric phase (CMJ:32.1%, DJ:91.5%) in SROM than that in LROM. v4 was greater for SJ in LROM than for SJ in SROM indicating the significance of the longer active state and greater activation level (p < 0.001). The difference in v4 was greater between SJ and CMJ in SROM (38.6%) than in LROM (9.0%), suggesting that elastic energy storage and re-use can be a dominant factor in the enhancement of vertical velocity of CMJ and DJ compared with SJ performed with SROM.