The association between countermovement rebound jump metrics and independent measures of athletic performance

This study investigates associations between countermovement rebound jump (CMRJ) perfor-mance metrics and various independent measures of athletic performance, including the isometric mid-thigh pull (IMTP), 20-m linear sprint, and 505 change-of-direction (COD) speed tests. Pearson correlations were used to analyse the relationship between the CMRJ measures with athletic per-formance, with significance was set at p ≤ 0.006. Results showed large significant positive rela-tionships between IMTP peak force and force at 300 milliseconds with the first jump height of the CMRJ (JH-1, r = 0.54 to 0.55, p ≤ 0.002). Additionally, inverse relationships were observed between reactive strength index modified (RSImod) and reactive strength index (RSI) with 20-m sprint total and split times (r = -0.55 to -0.66, p ≤ 0.001), and the 10-m and total sprint times were significantly correlated with JH-1 (r = -0.54, p = 0.003), indicating that greater vertical explosive power and re-active strength are associated with faster sprint performance. Finally, a significant inverse rela-tionship was identified between CMRJ metrics (two JH values and RSImod) and 505 COD times in both sides (r = -0.51 to -0.68, p ≤ 0.006). These findings suggest that CMRJ performance metrics are valuable indicators of lower-limb explosive force production, with a strong link to both linear sprint and COD performance. The finding underscores the importance of including CMRJ as-sessments in athletic performance evaluations due to their dual assessment capacity of slow and fast stretch-shortening cycle mechanics.

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