A mechanistic (e.g., twitch peak force) and a performance-related understanding (e.g., jump height) of PAP have been established in the literature with different characteristics, e.g., in terms of effective conditioning contractions, testing procedures, or time courses of effects.

Associations between selected measures of the mechanistic vs. the performance-related PAP approaches revealed inconsistent trivial-to-large-sized correlation coefficients.

We propose alternative terminology to unambiguously differentiate between increases in muscular force/torque production during an electrically-evoked twitch (postactivation potentiation [PAP]) and enhancements of measures of maximal strength, power, and speed (postactivation performance enhancement [PAPE]) following conditioning contractions.