The aim of this study was to examine the effects of post-activation potentiation (PAP) on performance and physiological measures during endurance cycling. Eleven well trained male endurance cyclists (mean ± SD; 32.7 ± 10.3 yr; 70.7 ± 7.2 kg; VO2max 65.3 ± 5.3 ml·kg-1·min-1) performed two 4 km cycling time trials on separate days following 5 minutes recovery after a) a moderate intensity cycling warm-up at 60% of VO2peak for 6.5 minutes (CONTCOND), and b) a PAP-inducing cycling warm-up (PAPCOND) consisting of 5 minutes at 60% of VO2peak then 3 x 10 s at 70% of peak power interspersed with 30 s recovery, in a counterbalanced design. Before the start of the time trial blood lactate was significantly elevated following PAP-inducement compared to the moderate warm-up (4.88 ± 1.36 mM·L-1 vs 1.14m ± 0.26 mM·L-1). A non-significant possibly small improvement in completion time (1.7 ± 3.5 s, P = 0.17) and a non-significant increase in power (5.1 ± 10.5 W, P = 0.16) were attributed to PAPCOND. Following PAPCOND oxygen uptake (VO2) was elevated by 1.44 ± 1.65 ml·kg-1·min-1 (P = 0.02) and respiratory exchange ratio (RER) was decreased by 0.05 ± 0.02 (P < 0.01) compared to CONTCOND. All differences were greatest in the first 1500 m. A PAP-inducing warm-up leads to small performance improvements in endurance cycling that are associated with elevated blood lactate and increased VO2. These performance improvements are most evident in the early stages so would be of greatest benefit in short endurance cycle races
