Enhancing the use of flywheel training in field based team sports

de Keijzer, Kevin Lorenzo Leong (2024) Enhancing the use of flywheel training in field based team sports. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

Flywheel training is a resistance training methodology that has been implemented in sport to enhance strength, performance, and reduce likelihood of injury. This thesis appraises the literature, studies how sports practitioners apply flywheel training, and investigates how flywheel training affects strength and power amongst athletes. Chapter 1 briefly introduces flywheel training. Chapter 2 highlights discrepancies in the quality of published reviews and supports the use of flywheel training for enhancing strength and power with healthy and athletic populations. Chapters 2 and 3 identify that limited evidence is available on unilateral flywheel exercises, even though a large proportion of practitioners apply them. Chapters 2 and 3 also clearly highlight a strong bias in flywheel research and practice towards male populations and therefore less remains known about how flywheel training influences strength of female athletes. Since Chapters 2 and 3 identified limited knowledge on unilateral hamstring exercises and their relevance to performance, Chapter 4 investigates how manipulating training variables influences power across exercises. Chapter 5 reports that unilateral hamstring exercises do not significantly enhance isometric or eccentric hamstring strength but do significantly improve flywheel specific power. Considering the strong bias towards research amongst male athletes, Chapter 6 demonstrates that 7 weeks of flywheel or traditional resistance training similarly enhance isokinetic and isometric strength of female athletes. A key finding is that two weekly sessions of flywheel training can enhance strength of female athletes during a competitive in-season period. Overall, the thesis provides an up-to-date review of the literature and its limitations, a greater understanding of how practitioners use flywheel training and their perceptions, further study into the application and monitoring of unilateral flywheel training specific for development of hamstrings strength and power, and a comparison of flywheel and traditional resistance training effects on strength amongst a female athlete cohort.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > School of Health Sciences
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	24 Feb 2025 08:18
Last Modified:	24 Feb 2025 08:18
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/98566
DOI:

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