Considerations For the Application of Priming Exercise in Elite Sport Qualitative Data Set

During semi-structured interviews, participants were invited to (i) share their opinions about how priming exercise may be prescribed to enhance sporting performance and (ii) offer considerations for implementing priming exercise in practical environments. Purposive sampling was used to identify 28 individuals currently working as practitioners in Australian elite sport. Participants were employed at State institutes of sport or professional sporting clubs and involved in the physical preparation of athletes representing 30 sports. Following university ethical approval, participants (<em>n </em>= 28) were contacted by a gatekeeper at Sport Australia to invite them to participate in a face-to-face interview. Individuals interested in participating in the study were provided with an information sheet that detailed the interview topic and discussed the ethical implications of their involvement. The individuals were then invited to ask questions about the research project and, following initial contact, asked to arrange a suitable time and location for an interview. Before the start of the interview process, ethical considerations (i.e., the use of pseudonyms, data confidentiality, and participants' right to withdraw) were provided to all participants. Participants were required to provide their written informed consent at this time. Thematic analysis revealed six organising themes relating to factors affecting the choice to implement priming exercise and how these considerations influenced prescription within competitive settings: (a) limited knowledge, (b) training age, (c) priming outcomes, (d) logistics, (e) buy-in, and (f) programming. The findings highlight that in addition to practitioners’ perceived limited knowledge of priming methods, contextual factors largely determined whether priming strategies were applied and, based on these considerations, how exercise stimuli were programmed to elicit a performance-enhancing effect. In addition to gaining insight into applied practices, the findings provide a framework for future investigations examining the acute effects of exercise stimuli on performance outcomes in sporting environments.