Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of 8-week core training on core endurance and running economy in college athletes. Twenty-one male college athletes were randomly divided into 2 groups: a control group (CON) (n = 10) and a core training group (CT) (n = 11). Both groups maintained their regular training, whereas CT attended 3 extra core training sessions per week for 8 weeks. The participants were assessed before and after the training program using sensory organization test (SOT), sport-specific endurance plank test (SEPT) and 4-stage treadmill incremental running test (TIRT). Compared with the pre-test, significant improvements were observed in post-test SOT (78.8 ± 4.8 vs. 85.3 ± 4.8, p = 0.012) and SEPT (193.5 ± 71.9 s vs. 241.5 ± 98.9 s, p = 0.001) performances only in CT. In the TIRT, the post-test heart rate values were lower than the pre-test values in CT in the first 3 stages. In stage 4, the post-test oxygen consumption (VO2) was lower than that in pre-test in CT (VO2: 52.4 ± 3.5 vs. 50.0 ± 2.9 ml/kg/min, p = 0.019). These results reveal that 8-week core training may improve static balance, core endurance, and running economy in college athletes.
Citation: Hung K-C, Chung H-W, Yu CC-W, Lai H-C, Sun F-H (2019) Effects of 8-week core training on core endurance and running economy. PLoS ONE 14(3):
e0213158.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0213158
Editor: Stephen E. Alway, University of Tennessee Health Science Center College of Graduate Health Sciences, UNITED STATES
Received: May 8, 2018; Accepted: February 16, 2019; Published: March 8, 2019
Copyright: © 2019 Hung et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper.
Funding: This study was supported by the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Social Science (FLASS) learning development grant (ref.: FLASS/LDG05/201516) of the Education University of Hong Kong. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.