The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of aquatic plyometric training (APT) on muscular strength, sprint velocity, power and muscle damage in basketball players. Seventeen male college basketball players were randomly assigned to perform 6 weeks of APT or land exercise twice weekly, both in addition to traditional preseason basketball training. All parameters were tested at baseline one week before beginning of the preseason training and also after six weeks. Two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to examine the significant changes in muscular strength, power, speed, anaerobic capacity and muscle damage. In the results we observed that aquatic or land plyometric training significantly (p＜.05) improved the muscular strength, drop jump, 30 m dash and anaerobic capacity after 6 weeks. The APT group showed significantly lower creatine kinase than the land exercised group. From these results it was concluded that the aquatic plyometrics can provide the same benefits in performance enhancement as land plyometrics, with significantly less muscle soreness.
