Run-up velocity and pedaling power of male elite gymnasts on vault in China

Abstract A high run-up speed and a big pedaling power are crucial to perform difficult movements and improving the quality of movement performance in the competition vault. We aimed to investigate the interrelations between different run-up speeds and pedaling power to explore the different requirements of performing different vault styles as well as difficult movements on run-up speed and pedaling power. The data of 30 male elite gymnasts were included in the analysis. Binary logistic regression analysis were used for statistical analysis. We found that the special requirement for run-up speed and pedaling power may vary as the difficult vault. There was no significant difference in the pedaling run-up speed between the Front handspring types and Cartwheel types (p > 0.05), but the run-up speeds were significantly associated with D-score in some vault types (p < 0.05). The comparison between interval run-up speeds revealed that the last 5m run-up speeds were faster during the 25m run-up distance, and 30m sprint speed was strongly associated with the 25m vaulting run-up speed of Handspring and Cartwheel (r = 0.81, p < 0.01). Pedaling power was significantly associated with vault types (p < 0.05) as well as D-score (p < 0.01) and obviously increased when the D-score was above 4.6. Pedaling power was strongly correlated with 25m run-up speed (r = 0.715, p < 0.01), last 5m run-up speed ( r = 0.718, p < 0.01), and 30m sprint speed (r = 0.704, p < 0.01) respectively, but not significantly associated with last 10-5m run-up speed as well as before the last 10m run-up speed (p > 0.05).