Casey Cottle publishes paper in ‘Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research’

Casey Cottle (Applied Exercise Science ’12) a current student in É«ÏãÊÓƵ’s Doctor of Physical Therapy program, is the primary author of a paper that was accepted for publication in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, the official research journal of the National Strength and Conditioning Association.

Cottle collected the data and completed the study as an undergraduate student.

Lara Carlson, Ph.D., FACSM, assistant professor in the Department of Applied Exercise Science and the Center for Excellence in the Neurosciences (CEN), and research advisor Michael Lawrence, M.S., motion analysis lab manager served as coauthors.

In the paper, the authors discuss sled towing as a popular method of training to shave precious seconds off of sprint times, noting that in the past researchers have struggled to identify a loading scheme that is most appropriate to improve sprint performance in the acceleration phase.

The purpose of the study was to examine different loading schemes of assigned percentages of body weight (BWT) to see if they would produce significantly greater propulsive ground reaction force impulse (GRF), peak propulsive GRF, or greater propulsive rate of force development (RFD) than in un-weighted sprint starts. The study concluded that loading with 20% BWT was sufficient to increase propulsive GRF impulse.

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