Many competitive sports require athletes to have high levels of strength and/or power and other dimensions of strength such as the rate of force development and muscular endurance. High levels of these qualitites have been shown to enhance athletic performance and/or prolong the onset of muscular fatigue. These strength qualities have also been shown to be able to discriminate between athletes of different levels of representation in team sports (Fry, Kraemer, Weseman, Conroy, Gordon, Hoffman & Marsh, 1991). In order to improve athletic performance, athletes have been participating in different variations of resistance training programs since the 1950s (Kraemer & Fleck, 1988). Resistance training is also a popular physical fitness activity and can improve muscular qualities that are important for the health for both men and women. Resistance training has been found to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, osteoporosis, non-insulin-dependent diabetes and obesity (Fleck & Kraemer, 1997; Feigenbaum & Pollock, 1997). Designing resistance training programs that can result in adaptations that bring about improvement in the different strength qualities is a task that will challenge the skill of coaches and trainers, especially when the training program is for athletes of high representation levels. Resistance training programs have been usually set to first condition the body to prepare it for higher levels of training as the program progresses. The training of other strength qualities like maximal strength, power and endurance typically follows. The improvements achieved must then be transferred to the skill that is required by the athletes. In the last few decades, improvement of strength qualities have been organized according to the concept of periodization, which promotes the arrangement of the training regimen into phases with the objective of maximizing the capacity of the athlete to meet specific demands of his/her sport. Variables such as resistance, volume, intensity and specificity are varied according to the requirements of each phase in order to acquire peak conditioning and performance levels for targeted important competitions (Bompa, 1993). Existing studies on periodization have a variety of different manipulations for training volume and intensity. Earlier studies on periodization mainly utilized linear periodization where a program would begin with high volume and low intensity, progressing through to low volume, but high intensity as competition draws near. More recent studies have used undulating periodization where training volume and intensity were programmed to alternate training days that emphasized different strength qualities like hypertrophy, strength and power. In addition to that, most studies have used male subjects and their results implied for women. This study will investigate the development of strength qualities in trained and untrained women using a linear periodized resistance program and an undulating periodized program matched for training volume and intensity. Comparisons will also be made between these two different programs for improvements in the onset rate of muscular fatigue of women, and for changes in upper and lower body strength and power development.
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