Frontiers in Sports and Active Living最新文献

Introduction: This study aimed to review the impact of tele-exercise on different adult populations, comparing synchronous and asynchronous interventions and their effects on outcomes such as quality of life, physical fitness, functional capacity, strength, and pain.

Methods: Randomised clinical trials and quasi-experimental studies published between 2014 and 2024 were included, totalling 16 studies with 1,416 participants. The interventions varied between synchronous teleexercise (via videoconference) and asynchronous (via apps and recorded videos). The review followed the PRISMA guidelines, ensuring a systematic approach to study selection, data extraction, and bias assessment.

Results: The results indicate that tele-exercise, especially synchronous, has the potential to primarily improve physical fitness, functional capacity, and pain perception, being effective for the elderly and individuals with specific conditions such as multiple sclerosis and obesity.

Discussion: However, the methodological heterogeneity of the studies and the lack of consistent data limit the generalisation of the findings, highlighting the need for more high-quality research.

Systematic review registration: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?ID=CRD42024563241, PROSPERO (CRD42024563241).

Objective: The primary objective was to compare the physical capacities of individuals with Long COVID [Long COVID group (LCG)] to those who had COVID-19 but did not develop persistent symptoms [short COVID group (SCG)], and to individuals without a history of COVID-19 [control group (CG)]. The secondary objectives were to provide a comprehensive profile of sociodemographic and COVID-19 history of individuals with Long COVID, considering factors such as sex, gender, hospitalization, time since onset, and comorbidities, and b) identify self-reported and objective clinical measures explaining health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in individuals with Long COVID.

Methods: A total of 120 adults were included in each of the groups. Participants completed self-reported assessments covering HRQoL, comorbidities, pain, sleep, and fatigue. Physical assessments included handgrip strength (HGS), Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB), 6-minute-walk-test (6MWT), perceived exertion during the 6MWT (Modified-Borg Scale), and daily step count during a 7-day period.

Results: Mean age (mean [SD]) for LCG, SCG, and CG was 44.2 [11.2], 42.1 [16.4], and 46[15.9], respectively. LCG showed significantly higher pain, comorbidities, and fatigue, along with lower HRQoL and sleep quality compared to the other groups. HGS, SPPB, and 6MWT performance were also significantly lower in LCG, while perceived exertion during 6MWT was higher. Finally, the number of steps per day was significantly lower in LCG. Higher prevalence of obesity and comorbidities were identified among those hospitalized after COVID-19. Fatigue, pain, comorbidities, and Step count were the variables explaining HRQoL for LCG (R2: 0.58; F = 35.9).

Conclusion: Long COVID individuals, on average 329 [146] days post-infection, experience enduring physical and health-related challenges, with significant implications for their overall well-being.

The determination rock climbing route difficulty is notoriously subjective. While there is no official standard for determining the difficulty of a rock climbing route, various difficulty rating scales exist. But as the sport gains more popularity and prominence on the international stage at the Olympic Games, the need for standardized determination of route difficulty becomes more important. In commercial climbing gyms, consistency and accuracy in route production are crucial for success. Route setters often rely on personal judgment when determining route difficulty, but the success of commercial climbing gyms requires their objectivity in creating diverse, inclusive, and accurate routes. Machine and deep learning techniques have the potential to introduce a standardized form of route difficulty determination. This survey review categorizes machine and deep learning approaches taken, identifies the methods and algorithms used, reports their degree of success, and proposes areas of future work for determining route difficulty. The primary three approaches were from a route-centric, climber-centric, or path finding and path generation context. Of these, the most optimal methods used natural language processing or recurrent neural network algorithms. From these methods, it is argued that the objective difficulty of a rock climbing route has been best determined by route-centric, natural-language-like approaches.

Background: Sedentary behavior is one of the major modifiable behavioral risk factors for non-communicable diseases. Physical activity (PA) is crucial during pregnancy but pregnant women may become sedentary, leading to adverse health outcomes. Our study aimed to explore the association between social support and PA levels during pregnancy and the relationship between sedentary behavior and adverse pregnancy health outcomes including delivery.

Methods: The study used a validated physical activity questionnaire to assess the physical activity levels of pregnant women. We collected detailed sociodemographic information, pregnancy characteristics, assessed social support. We assessed presence of depressive symptoms and conducted oral glucose tolerance tests, hemoglobin and blood pressure assessments, anthropometric measurements, and collected delivery details. We used linear logistic regression to assess the association between a continuous measure of physical activity level and maternal outcomes and performed multivariable logistic regression analysis to understand the association between sedentary behavior and maternal health outcomes and mode of delivery after adjusting for potential confounders.

Results: We interviewed 2,424 eligible pregnant women at baseline and 1,317 were considered in the final analysis after excluding those who missed follow-ups. We observed that one unit increase in physical activity level was associated with reduced prenatal depressive symptoms (β = -6.36, p < 0.001), fasting (β = 2.06, p = 0.04), and postprandial blood sugar levels (β = -0.99, p = 0.01), respectively. Pregnant women who had good social support tended to engage in higher levels of activity. In addition, women who engaged in sedentary behavior during pregnancy were 1.07 times more likely to be obese and 4.32 times more likely to have elective cesarean section (C-section) delivery than those who engaged in moderate activity.

Conclusion: The study found that physical activity during pregnancy has several beneficial effects on maternal prenatal health outcomes, including a reduced risk of obesity and C-section delivery, lower blood glucose levels, and improved mental health. Therefore, it is essential to adhere to the recommended guidelines for physical activity during pregnancy. Healthcare providers and policymakers in India should consider promoting physical activity as part of comprehensive routine prenatal care.

Football is one of the most widely practiced sports in the world, and competition significantly influences athletic performance, especially in adolescents who experience emotional pressure that impacts their performance through the management of performance-related stress. Physical education is integrated within the school curriculum, but it is also typically delivered in sports associations engaged in competitive activities, which become informal learning environments as they pursue the same educational goals as schools. However, few studies have focused on this aspect, particularly the role of emotions and their relationship with performance anxiety in adolescent football players. The aim of this study was to analyze the relationship between pre-competitive anxiety and emotional regulation in adolescents regarding competitive performance. The study design was exploratory. A sample of 79 Under-19 football players, with a mean age of 14.6 (±1.89) years, was recruited through convenience sampling. A battery of pre-competition questionnaires was administered, including the Sport Anxiety Scale-2 (SAS-2) to measure anxiety levels and the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue-SF) to assess pre-competition emotional levels. Spearman's correlation was used to evaluate the strength and direction of the relationship between emotional levels and anxiety, while Chi-square test was employed to examine differences in anxiety levels across different player roles. The results showed that 70% of the football players displayed normal anxiety levels, with no significant differences across player positions. No significant correlation was found between emotional levels and anxiety. The primary causes of anxiety were cognitive concerns and bodily sensations, which negatively affected concentration. Although emotions were generally high, they did not appear to directly influence performance anxiety, suggesting that other factors may contribute to pre-competitive emotional regulation. In conclusion, contrary to common belief, performance anxiety in adolescent football competitions does not have a direct impact on emotional levels.

Introduction: Interactions between cognitive functions and sports-specific motor actions are crucial for strategic sports performance. Change of direction speed (CODS) is an essential motor ability required for rapid positional maneuvering in football. Although CODS lacks perceptual judgment and anticipatory elements of higher-level cognition, its connection with fundamental cognitive abilities cannot be undermined. The attentional networks is the basis of the fundamental cognitive abilities controlling complex behavior. The present study aimed to investigate the association between CODS ability and the efficiency of alerting, orienting, and executive components of the attentional networks, and decision-making in footballers.

Methods: Seventy-eight male footballers (age: 15.4 ± 0.87 years, BMI: 19.4 ± 1.98 kg/m²) during pre-season completed a battery of field tests comprising Illinois agility test (IAT), 30 m sprint, standing broad jump, and Yo-Yo test. Attentional network components and decision-making ability were tested in the participants with computerized Attentional Network Test-Interactions (ANT-I) and choice reaction time (CRT) tasks in the laboratory set-up. A 2(alerting) ×3 (orienting) ×2 (executive) repeated measures ANOVA tested interactions between the attentional network components. Partial correlation was conducted between the physical (field tests) and cognitive test scores adjusted for age and BMI.

Results: CODS ability measured with IAT was significantly correlated [r = +0.507 (large), p < 0.05] with the executive control network only, nor with alerting [r = -0.039 (trivial), p > 0.05] and orienting [r = + 0.051 (trivial), p > 0.05] networks and neither the CRT task performance [r = -0.011 (trivial), p > 0.05].

Discussion: A strong positive association between executive control and preplanned CODS indicates better interference control by the attentional network. The later may be a factor for faster CODS execution in young footballers. Hence, it may be concluded that better CODS ability is possibly an outcome of innate competence in executive control of the attentional network in young male footballers. These findings attempted to fill the knowledge gap by highlighting the importance of the attentional network functions in modulating CODS ability. The outcomes can benefit football training by implementing ANT-I test in sports-specific settings and for screening purposes. However in the future, a large-scale study including female footballers is required to strengthen this claim further.

Objective: This study examined the accuracy of smartwatches in predicting running performance.

Methods: A total of 154 amateur runners (123 males and 31 females) were recruited. After wearing the HUAWEI WATCH GT Runner for a minimum of six weeks, the runners' actual completion times for 5 km, 10 km, and half marathon distances were measured, resulting in 288 test instances. The predicted completion times for the same distances displayed on the watch on the test day were recorded simultaneously.

Results: The actual and predicted performances for the 5, 10, and 21.1 km distances were highly correlated, with r ≥ 0.95 (p < 0.001) and r ² ≥ 0.9 for all three distances, an error rate between the measured and predicted values of less than 3%, and intraclass correlation coefficient ≥0.9. The bias ± 95% limits of agreement were -20.4 ± 44.2 s for 5 km, 4.1 ± 299.1 s for 10 km, and 143.8 ± 400.4 s for the half marathon.

Conclusions: This study confirmed that the smartwatch exhibits high precision in predicting 5 km, 10 km, and half marathon performances, with an accuracy exceeding 97%. The performance prediction features of smartwatches can effectively guide amateur runners in setting reasonable competition goals and preparing for races.

Introduction: Obesity in adolescents is associated with reduced physical activity and athletic engagement, highlighting the need for tailored physical education programs. This study evaluated the effects of a 7-week adapted basketball program on the performance and athletic engagement of students with obesity.

Methods: Sixty-two students with obesity (23 boys, 39 girls, aged 15-17) were randomly assigned to an experimental group (EG, n = 30; 11 boys, 19 girls) participating in adapted basketball sessions or a control group (CG, n = 32; 12 boys, 20 girls) attending standard basketball lessons. Both groups completed 52-minute sessions twice weekly. Pre- and post-intervention assessments included a questionnaire evaluating perceptions of physical education and athletic performance during final matches.

Results: The EG showed significant improvements in interest, motivation (p < 0.05), perceived competence (p < 0.001), and reduced exercise difficulty (p < 0.001). Perceived fitness levels increased significantly only in EG girls (p = 0.013). In contrast, no significant changes were observed in the CG before and after the intervention for any of the parameters. During matches, the EG outperformed the CG, with more successful shots (girls: p = 0.0004; boys: p = 0.012), fewer missed shots (girls: p = 0.033; boys: p = 0.046), and more successful passes (p = 0.032, η² = 0.042).

Discussion: These results demonstrate that adapted physical education programs can serve as effective interventions for improving physical activity and promoting inclusion among adolescents with obesity while also serving as a preventive measure against obesity.

Introduction: The study aims to investigate the development of a learner-centered teaching (LCT), a constructivist-based proposal focused on the learner and the learning process, in a university-based coach education program (CEP) through an action research (AR) approach.

Methods: Participants were six students, the researcher and the professor of a Sport Pedagogy course of a public Brazilian university. The classes were taught in a collaborative way between the professor and the researcher, and rubrics were used to guide the LCT development process.

Results and discussion: The proposal was developed gradually and progressively in the course, through diversified teaching strategies that prioritized student interaction and reflection. Facilitators were constantly concerned to ensure that students' perspectives and knowledge were valued during the construction of new teaching content, contributing to align the course with the LCT perspective. While at the beginning of the course the dimensions function of content and role of the teacher were emphasized, in subsequent classes greater attention was devoted to increasing students' responsibility for learning, balance the power between facilitators and students, and promote integrated, authentic assessment processes. To advance the investigated CEP, we recommend the LCT development in other courses of the program, enabling the consolidation of a curricular culture aligned to the constructivist perspective.