Clinical Sports Research Articles

“We React Less. We React Differently. We React Better”: A Case Study of a Mindfulness-Based Intervention for Olympic Referee Performance

This case study details the experience and results of the first author’s work as a clinical sport psychologist contracted by the International Volleyball Federation to develop and deliver a mindfulness-based intervention to volleyball and beach volleyball referees leading up to the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Interviews with the referee commission revealed referees’ high levels of pre- and in-game stress, which can inhibit their cognitive decision-making ability needed to perform at a high level. A five-stage (emotional intelligence, stress management skills, concentration, mental imagery, and motivation) mindfulness-based intervention was developed to address referees’ attentional skills, emotional readiness, and mindful awareness. The five stages were delivered over the 4 months preceding the Games, where the clinician was also available on-site for individual preparation. Referees completed pre- and postintervention quantitative (Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2, and Concentration Skills Self-Help Test) and qualitative surveys as well as a post-Olympics evaluation of the practical tools introduced during the mindfulness-based intervention. In-game performances were evaluated by referee delegates prior to and at the Olympics. Analysis of the data showed significant positive changes in the mindfulness factors observing and nonreaction, referees’ concentration skills, and the evaluations of in-game performances. Multiple tools were reported to be highly useful and frequently implemented, including during the Olympics.

Application of Capacitive-Resistive Electric Transfer in Physiotherapeutic Clinical Practice and Sports.

Diathermy techniques embody an oscillating electrical current passaging through the body tissues generating therapeutic heat; use of this technique in the physiotherapy field has been introduced recently, and because there is scarce information, the following review is proposed, aiming to explore the available evidence on applying CRET in physiotherapy clinical practice and sports. A systematic search was led through a keyword search on PubMed, MedLine, DialNet, Scopus, PEDro, Web of Science and Clinicaltrials databases. Including randomised controlled trials and quasi-experimental studies, which applied radiofrequency diathermy in sports and physiotherapy fields, without any restrictions on dates, published in Spanish, English, Portuguese or Italian. Data extraction was conducted through the Cochrane data extraction form and presented in tabular format; 30 articles were included for analysis, and assessment of methodological quality was made through the PEDro scale with a “Good/Fair” general quality score. The nature of existing articles does not allow a quantitative analysis. Conclusion: identified fields of applications were musculoskeletal physiotherapy, treatment of pelvic floor and sexual dysfunctions, as well as dermato-functional physiotherapy and sports, evidencing an increase of skin temperature, enhanced skin and muscle blood perfusion, as well as reporting an increase in oxyhaemoglobin. Further research is needed. Prospero registration number: CRD42020215592.

The Lymphatic Pump Technique for the Treatment of the Lower Limb Lymphedema

Lymphedema is a condition occurring when the lymphatic system fails to efficiently transport the lymph, thus creating a fluid accumulation in the interstitial space. As of today, the rehabilitation treatment for lymphedema relies on the principles of Complete Decongestive Therapy (CDT), a series of treatments designed to favor the reabsorption of the lymph by the lymphatic system and to restore the functionality of the affected limb. From an osteopathic point of view, interesting results have been obtained through Lymphatic Pump Technique (LPT), a series of oscillatory techniques applied to different areas of the body such as chest, abdomen and feet. A few LPT studies on animals have shown a significant improvement not only in the lymphatic system efficiency (an increase of 271% in lymph flow) but also in the immune system. Aim. From the scientific evidence derived from such studies, in this paper we propose a clinical trial aiming to demonstrate the benefits that this technique can bring to human beings in a specific rehabilitation process following a lower limb lymphoedema. Material and methods. An indirect volumetric measurement of lymphedematous limbs according to the segmental technique was performed on six subjects having a history of CDT treatments with different clinical histories, age, gender, work and sport characteristics.The results of the study group treated with the LPT were compared to the results of the same subjects who previously underwent CDT treatment only. The LPT was applied in 8 sessions for two weeks, i.e. for the period of time scheduled for normal physiotherapy rehabilitation including CDT. Results. The average volume before CDT was 9470.6 ml while after treatment was 8429 ml. The mean volume before CDT associated with LPT was 9608.5 ml, whereas after treatment the mean was 8267 ml with a significant reduction in lymphoedema. Conclusions. Despite the small number of cases examined, the treatment described in this project has led to positive and statistically significant results, in terms of absorption of lymphedema, especially reducing the volume of the limb. LPT is safe as it is a non-invasive technique, performed with the application of light forces, and integrates perfectly with the CDT.

Prehospital management of exertional heat stroke at sports competitions for Paralympic athletes

ObjectivesTo adapt key components of exertional heat stroke (EHS) prehospital management proposed by the Intenational Olympic Committee Adverse Weather Impact Expert Working Group for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 so...

The Reliability of Common Functional Performance Tests within an Experimental Test Battery for the Lower Extremities.

The main aim of this study was to determine the test–retest reliability of an experimental functional test battery: Y-balance test (YBT), single-leg countermovement jump (SLCMJ), single-leg hop for distance (SLH), side-hop (SH), speedy-jump (SJ), agility-T (AT), and lower extremity functional test (LEFT). Secondary aims were (1) to determine the mean range for the limb symmetry index (LSI) and (2) to detect significant differences in performance between test–retest sessions. Twenty-two healthy adults (14 males, 8 females; age 23.3 ± 3.9) were tested by the same rater during two different sessions (T1–T2), with a seven-day interval, under the same conditions. Reliability analysis showed good-to-excellent reliability (0.89 < ICC < 0.97; 0.80 < α < 0.98) for the test battery. LSI ranged from 95.9 ± 6.7% (SH-T1) to 104.4 ± 12.5% (SLCMJ-T2). Repeated measures ANOVA detected significant performance differences between sessions in the LEFT (p = 0.009) and for non-dominant sides in the SLH (p = 0.015), SH (p = 0.007), and SJ (p = 0.011). The high reliability of the test battery suggests a potential use in clinical sports practice. The LSI range of ≥95% was proposed as a benchmark for healthy adults. Learning effect seems to have played a crucial role in the T2 improvements of the non-dominant side for hop performances (SLH, SH, SJ) and speed performance (LEFT).

Mental Imagery and Self Hypnosis in Sports Performance

Self hypnosis and mental imagery are two sides of a coin, specially in case of modern sports. Hypnosis of oneself and mental imagery are totally immersive multi-sensory procedure that associates with numerous senses to create as a mental image and process it in absent of external stimuli. In the sport situation, imagery has been with a state in which person imagine while effecting abilities to deal with the future duty or improve performance capacity. Scientific analyses have stated that imagery increases performance in motor stimuli. Routines mental practice play an important role in sports and games, not only for the acquisition of motor skills, but also for preparation and sport injuries rehabilitation. Imagery techniques in sport are used for different purposes, as outlined by the process of self hypnosis and Model of Imagery Use in Sports, to improve skill acquisition, motivation, and sport confidence and to reduce anxiety.. Clinical sport hypnosis can help athletes acquire certain cognitive, psychological, behavioral and affective qualities so that their physical and mental capabilities are improved. According Wikipedia, sports hypnosis is defined as the use of hypnotherapy with athletes in order to improve sporting performance. Others define sport hypnosis as a form of mental training which can contribute to enhancing athletic performance. . It has been shown that different forms and functions of imagery prove to be effective for the above-mentioned functions depending on the characteristics of different sports and the expertise level of athletes. The present study reviews systematically the findings of other reports on various aspects of mental imagery and self hypnosis in the field of sports.

492-P: Glucose Level Recommendations for Vo2 Max Exercise Testing in Adolescents with Type 1 Diabetes

Glucose level recommendations have yet to be established for adolescents diagnosed with type 1 diabetes (T1D) who participate in VO2 max exercise testing for clinical or strength and conditioning purposes. Although a decrease in glucose may be expected throughout, and immediately after exercise testing, a minimal pre-test glucose setpoint has not been established to reduce the risk of hypoglycemia. Retrospective medical and sports medicine chart reviews were conducted of clinical pediatric sports medicine and physical activity program patients with a diagnosis of T1D (N = 24; mean age = 15.5 ± 1.7 years; male = 14, 58.3%) who participated in a modified Bruce protocol for maximal oxygen uptake (VO2 max). The majority of the participants identified as non-Hispanic (n = 22, 91.7%) and white (n = 19, 79.2%). Their average body mass index (BMI) based on age and sex was in the 66th percentile ± 19.5 and their average hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) was 8.8% ± 1.8. Almost 2/3 of the participants (n = 15, 62.5%) wore a continuous glucose monitor. Their average VO2 max peak was 43.7 ml/kg/min ± 7.1. A paired-samples t-test was employed to detect a statistically significant reduction in glucose levels between pretest (&amp;lt; 30 minutes, mean = 191.1 mg/dl ± 61.2) and post-test VO2 max (&amp;lt; 5 minutes, mean = 166.7 mg/dl ± 57.9); t(21) = 2.3, p &amp;lt;. 05). The American Diabetes Association recommends that glucose levels do not fall below 70 mg/dl in order to prevent symptoms of hypoglycemia. These results demonstrated a mean decrease in glucose of 24.4 mg/dl and provide further data which can be used to set safety parameters and expectations for adolescents with T1D participating in VO2 max testing. Disclosure K. King: None. B. J. Thrasher: None. T. E. Mckay: None. K. A. Wintergerst: None.

Implementation of Extreme Gradient Boosting Machine Learning Algorithm in Low Power FPGA for Wearable Lactate Sensing Platforms

Commercialization of biosensors has been limited due to their accuracy and reliability. Creating intelligent biosensors to automatically predict concentrations of analytes based on some decision system would overcome this challenge. Many advanced machine learning algorithms for data processing are emerging and becoming a hot topic of research for scientists worldwide, but their application in biosensors, particularly in wearable systems is still limited. Wearable lactate sensors is an emerging field of application in continuous personal health monitoring. Monitoring the fluctuations of lactate level is important to diagnose and evaluate the health concerns related to lactate acidosis and those which occur in oxygen deficit situations such as systemic healthcare in military and high-risk personnel clinical emergencies, sports, and general medicine.In this paper, we report on implementation of the Gradient Boosted Trees (GBT) classifier in a wearable biosensor platform for Lactate monitoring. Five different concentrations of lactate, ranging from 10 pM to 10 mM, were measured by the Cyclic Voltammetry (CV) technique. The CV measurements were taken in the potential range of -0.1 V to 1.2 V at scan rate of 50 mV/s. The objectives were to determine the different concentrations of lactate accurately with the GBT classifier and keep the computational power low enough to function on wearable or mobile devices. The main component that uses the most processing power in neural networks is the matrix multiplication used for adjusting the parameters. Limiting the data being input into the network as much as possible can have major improvements in the required computational power of any neural network. Further acceleration can be gained by porting the classifier onto an FPGA for computing any unknown concentrations. Once a neural network model is trained and tested on the CPU until an optimized result is acquired, it can be mapped onto the FPGA for accelerated processing speeds.The neural network used in this study was constructed using python in the Jupyter Notebook environment. 12,000 samples were collected from the CV process, each concentration containing 2400 currents. The data had to be preprocessed in order to have the labels in its own column, changing the dimensions of the data from 2402 x 6 to 12001 x 3. Graphing the data of the concentrations showed that each concentration can be identified by the peak of the curve, ranging from 0.259 to 0.276 V. This reduced the input data from 12,000 to 55. The data was split into 80/10/10, train/validation/test respectively and ran through the classifier and compared against a log regression classifier. The GBT performed extremely well, resulting in 94% accuracy on the testing dataset compared to the 52% accuracy from the log regressor. We investigated the performance and power consumption for the proposed algorithm for Intel Cyclone V System-on-Chip (SoC) FPGA. The weights for the neurons need to be converted into fixed-point numbers using the python code since they can not be calculated by the FPGA, and hard-coded into the neural network being implemented by the VHDL code. The core voltage supply for this specific FPGA averages to 1.1 V and an ammeter was connected to the processing core to calculate the current output of the digital logic, resulting in 43.5 mA. The derived power consumption from multiplying the voltage and current was 47.85 mW, which is much lower than the estimated power of 909.15 mW for the CPU, received from the Windows task manager. This drastic reduction of power would allow for the proposed method process substantially bigger datasets in low-power computational platforms.The presented work shows the feasibility and efficiency of using GBT classification in wearable biosensing platforms with low power budgets to improve their accuracy.

Recreational activity after cementless total hip arthroplasty in patients older than 75 years

IntroductionThis retrospective study aimed to compare activity levels before and at mid-term follow-up after primary cementless total hip arthroplasty (THA) in patients older than 75 years.Materials and methodsA cohort of 79 patients with a mean age at surgery of 78 years (range 76–84 years) was evaluated 6.3 years (range 4–8 years) after cementless THA due to osteoarthritis and was followed up with a questionnaire to determine their activity level. Pre- and post-operative recreational activities were assessed at routine follow-up using the University of California, Los Angeles activity score, and the Schulthess Clinic sports and activity questionnaire. Post-operative health-related quality of life was measured using Veterans Rand 12-item survey (VR-12).ResultsSix years after THA, 72% of preoperatively active patients had returned to activity. Comparing activity preoperatively (before the onset of symptoms) and 6 years after THA, the number of disciplines and session length has decreased significantly. A significant decline in high-impact activities was observed, while participation in low-impact activities significantly increased.ConclusionThe majority of patients maintained a recreational activity level in the mid-term after primary cementless THA. However, a change in disciplines toward low-impact activities was observed.

Hydration and Physical Activity

The importance of water homeostasis is extremely important. Maintaining hydration, the state of preserving body water within its optimal homeostatic range, is essential to sustain life. Water is an essential nutrient and contributes 50-70% of total body mass. An assessment of hydration during physical activity can prevent dehydration, which impairs physical and cognitive performance. A 2% body mass loss is a recognized threshold beyond which exercise dehydration impairs exercise performance. Liquid needs for recreational sports and physical activity are individual and are rarely higher than 500ml of hypotonic fluid per hour. If fluid requirements are low, concentrated sports drinks (providing energy intake) can help sustain exercise performance. Overhydration could be dangerous and can result in hyponatremia. Individual evaluation of water needs is important. In warm environmental conditions, an individual nutrition and hydration plan is crucial for the health and optimal performance and using existing recommendations in clinical sports nutrition to prevent over - and dehydration.

The compassionate coach scale as perceived by the athlete: development and initial validation in Portuguese athletes

ABSTRACT The current study aimed to develop and validate a measure to assess an athlete’s perception of a coach’s compassionate qualities – The Compassionate Coach Scale as Perceived by the Athlete (CCS-PA). Two independent samples were used to validate this scale. Participants were Portuguese adult athletes of different sports, who completed self-reported measures on an online survey. The first sample (calibration sample; N = 181) was used to examine the structure of the scale. The second sample (validation sample; N = 247) was used to ascertain its structure and explore various aspects of its validity. A confirmatory factor analysis was employed to test the adequacy of the proposed hierarchical structure of the scale. One higher-order factor (perceived coach’s compassionate qualities) with two lower-order factors (compassionate engagement and compassionate actions) revealed an adequate fit to the data. The scale showed high internal consistency, convergent, discriminant and external validity and it was invariant across gender. CCS-PA revealed to be a reliable measure that allows the assessment of the athlete’s perception of the coach’s qualities of engagement with their distress/suffering and the coach’s abilities to take effective actions to prevent and alleviate it. This scale seems to be an important contribution for practical and research fields of clinical sport psychology, providing important help to identify features of the coaches that could be changed. Also, this study can be a potential contribution to alert coaches about the impact of their attitudes and behaviours on athlete’ mental health.

Electrochemical biosensor for glycine detection in biological fluids

We present herein the very first amperometric biosensor for the quantitative determination of glycine in diverse biological fluids. The biosensor is based on a novel quinoprotein that catalyzes the oxidation of glycine with high specificity. This process is coupled to the redox conversion of Prussian blue in the presence of hydrogen peroxide originating from the enzymatic reaction. The optimized tailoring of the biosensor design consists of the effective encapsulation of the quinoprotein in a chitosan matrix with the posterior addition of an outer Nafion layer, which is here demonstrated to suppress matrix interference. This is particularly important in the case of ascorbic acid, which is known to influence the redox behavior of the Prussian blue. The analytical performance of the biosensor demonstrates fast response time (<7 s), acceptable reversibility, reproducibility, and stability (<6% variation) as well as a wide linear range of response (25–500 μM) that covers healthy (and even most unhealthy) physiological levels of glycine in blood/serum, urine and sweat. A total of 6 real samples from healthy patients and animals were analyzed: two serum, two urine and two sweat samples. The results were validated via commercially available fluorescence kit, displaying discrepancy of less than 9% in all the samples. The unique analytical features and effortless preparation of the new glycine biosensor position it at the forefront of current technologies towards decentralized clinical applications and sport performance monitoring.

Hallux Sesamoid Injury Characteristics in Young Athletes Presented to the Sports Medicine Clinic.

To investigate clinical diagnoses, sports participation, and return to sport timeline associated with hallux sesamoid injuries with sex comparisons. Descriptive epidemiology study. Sports medicine clinics at a tertiary-level pediatric medical center. Six hundred eighty-three young athletes (546 women and 137 men). Sex (women vs men). Clinical diagnoses, participating sports, and injury timeline. The most common diagnosis was sesamoiditis (62.6%). The top 3 primary sports were dance (34.6%), running (13.7%), and soccer (11.7%). When stratified by sex, dance (40.1%), running (13.6%), and soccer (10.7%) were the top primary sports for women while running (19.4%), soccer (18.5%), and basketball (11.3%) were the leading diagnoses for male athletes. The mean time between injury occurrence and first clinic visit was 135.5 ± 229.3 days. The mean time between the first clinic visit and return to sport was 104.3 ± 128.2 days. Comparison by sex showed that women had a longer mean time than men (women: 111.5 ± 132.5 days, men: 67.2 ± 96.3 days, P = 0.001). The mean time from injury occurrence to return to sport was 235.2 ± 281.0 days. Women showed a longer mean timeline for return to sport compared with men (women: 245.2 ± 288.2 days, men: 179.3 ± 231.9 days, P = 0.014). Sesamoiditis was the most common diagnosis, and dance, running, and soccer were top 3 sports. The most salient finding was that women taking almost twice as long to return the sport or activity compared with men, which likely stems from delay of reporting symptom onset to clinics.

Detection of the synthetic peptide ipamorelin in dried blood spots by means of UHPLC-HRMS

Growth hormone-releasing peptides (GHRPs) are synthetic peptides that stimulate the release of growth hormones from the hypothalamus and pituitary gland. Among these, ipamorelin is a highly selective, potent and effective pentapeptide belonging to the class of growth hormone secretagogues (GHS). Because of clinical monitoring and the potential abuse by athletes in amateur and elite sports, detection methods able to identify GHRPs in biological samples are increasingly needed. As an alternative to conventional procedures, testing of Dried Blood Spots (DBS) is gaining increasing attention, since its low volume sampling is easy and scarcely invasive. In this study, an ultra high pressure liquid chromatography–high resolution mass spectrometry method was developed and validated for the screening of ipamorelin in DBS. Ipamorelin was extracted from DBS by liquid extraction and ultrasonic treatment, then detected by the acquisition of high-resolution fragmentation spectra. The method proved satisfactory in terms of sensitivity, specificity, linearity, recovery, precision and ion suppression/enhancement effects. The mass error of the precursor and fragment ions was lower than 5 ppm. Since ipamorelin was successfully detected in DBS with a detection limit of 2.5 ng/mL, the combination of DBS and high resolution mass spectrometry proved to be a suitable and effective method to detect small peptides in blood at low levels. This approach looks promising for targeted and untargeted analysis in clinical monitoring and sport drug testing, especially when unknown synthetic peptides represent the target analytes.

Infographic. COVID-19 RT-PCR testing for elite athletes

This infographic outlines evidence-based recommendations on COVID-19 reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR) testing in elite sport settings, aiming to protect personal and population health, and acknowledging resources and expertise that are...

Development and initial validation of athletes’ perceptions of coach-related critical attitudes scale

The aim of this study was to develop and validate the Athletes’ Perceptions of the Coach-related Critical Attitudes Scale (APoCCAS), using three independent samples of Portuguese adult athletes. In the first stage, the items were developed to assess athletes’ perceptions of coach-related critical attitudes and the items’ factorial structure were explored via a principal components analysis. In a second stage, the findings of Principal Components Analysis were confirmed and cross-validated using confirmatory factor analysis with two independent samples of athletes. The development of a pool of items resulted in a 10-item with a unifactorial structure. This scale presented high internal consistency, adequate convergent validity, and presented a negative association with self-reassurance and positive associations with self-criticism, anxiety, and depressive symptoms. The APoCCAS demonstrated to be a short and reliable measure of the athletes’ perceptions regarding coach-related critical attitudes and seems to be useful for practice and research fields in clinical sport psychology. By highlighting the associations between the athletes’ perception of coach-related critical attitudes and mental health indicators, this study could create a space to alert coaches towards the effect of their attitudes on athletes’ mental health.

STUDY OF ETHNIC AND REGIONAL FEATURES OF DERMATOGLYPHIC PARAMETERS OF HANDS AND FEET (LITERATURE REVIEW)

Abstract. The article outlines the prospects for studying the ethnic and regional features of dermatoglyphic parameters of hands and feet, given the intensification of migration processes both within Ukraine and worldwide, which each year causes a catastrophic increase in the number of people living outside the country or region origin. Refugees, labor and political migrants, migrants due to racial discrimination and other reasons today make up 3% of the world's population. The growing flow of world migration and assimilation creates all the conditions for the disappearance of pure ethnic groups and peoples. Therefore, modern scientists are interested in the availability of anthropometric, anthroposcopic, dermatoglyphic data of different populations to create regional gene pools. In the context of the above issues, the issue related to the study of anthroposcopic, anthropometric, dermatoglyphic parameters of the population of Ukraine, taking into account regional and ethno-territorial affiliation, remains relevant. The article also identifies the advantages of using the dermatoglyphic method, which include ease of use, financial burden and the ability to obtain results in a short time. A thorough analysis of the literature on this issue, based on which the main directions of application of dermatoglyphics. It has been determined that dermatoglyphic has been the subject of research by specialists in various fields of knowledge form overe the century. Based on the results of studying the features of dermatoglyphic, anthropometric and anthroposcopic parameters, scientists have proposed a zoning scheme of the territory of Ukraine.The results obtained by studying the comb pattern of human hands and feet still remain an informative source in medicine, criminology, anthropology and population genetics. Genetic conditionality of dermatoglyphic parameters allows to use dermatoglyphics to solve a number of issues that arise during ethno anthropological and population-genetic studies. Dermatoglyphics is widely used in medicine: clinical (in predicting the likelihood of various pathological conditions) sports (in determining the physical capabilities of the person). In the practice of forensic medicine, dermatoglyphics has until recently been used in the examination of disputed paternity, but in recent decades it has also been actively used in determining family affiliation, analysis of family ties with subsequent use of data to identify unknown persons parameters of relatives. A number of Ukrainian scientists who studied the ethnic features of dermatoglyphic, anthropometric and anthroposcopic parameters, their contribution to Ukrainian ethnodermatoglyphics and outlined prospects for study were identified in the literature analysis. The main key issues considered by scientists from other countries of the world are also identified, the method of studying the ethnic and territorial features of dermatoglyphic, anthropometric and anthroposcopic parameters used by them is evaluated and the results obtained by them are analyzed. Іn the context of the above, it should be noted that the study of ethnological, regional features of dermatoglyphic parameters of the hands and feet is relevant among the world scientific community. However, currently there are too few works by domestic authors devoted to the study of regional and ethno-territorial features of dermatoglyphic parameters, although given the intensification of migration processes, the prospects for its study are outlined.

INTER AND INTRA-RATER RELIABILITY OF THE DROP VERTICAL JUMP (DVJ) ASSESSMENT.

Non-contact injuries are common in sports as abnormal lower extremity joint mechanics can place athletes at risk for injury. It is important to have reliable, feasible, cost-effective assessment tools to determine lower limb control and injury risk. The purpose of the study was to assess the intra- and inter-rater reliability of a three-tiered anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury risk rating assessment of the drop vertical jump using frontal plane, two-dimensional (2-D) motion capture. Repeated measures. Twenty male elite basketball athletes performed the drop vertical jump during a 2-D video assessment at Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. DVJ scores indicated the following: 1 no visible knee valgus, 2 slight wobble, inward motion of the knees, and 3 knee collision or large frontal plane knee excursion. Score assessment from video of the drop vertical jump was obtained by four independent investigators. The four raters then re-examined the same videos 1 month later, blinded to their original scores. Intra-rater reliability Fleiss Kappa measure of agreement was substantial amongst all four raters at all scoring time points: initial contact (0.672), first landing (0.728), second landing (0.670), and peak valgus (0.662) (p < 0.001). The intra-rater ICC values were good at initial contact (0.809), second landing (0.874), and max valgus (0.885), however were excellent at first landing (0.914) (p < 0.001). Inter-rater reliability Fleiss Kappa measurement scores were slight at initial contact (0.173), fair at max valgus (0.343), and moderate at first landing (0.532) and second landing (0.514; p < 0.001). Inter-rater ICC values were moderate at initial contact (0.588), excellent at first landing (0.919), and good at second landing (0.883) and max valgus (0.882; p<0.001). When comparing scores of the drop vertical jump between four independent raters across two sessions, the study demonstrated substantial Kappa and good to excellent ICC intra-rater reliability. Inter-rater reliability demonstrated slight to moderate Kappa measurements of agreement and moderate to excellent ICC's. Thus, for excellent reliability using this assessment, patients should be scored by one individual. For moderate reliability between multiple raters, the first landing of the DVJ should be scored. Findings indicate that the proposed drop vertical jump assessment may be used for reliable identification of abnormal landing mechanics. Level 3.

Fiber Bragg Grating Sensors for Cardiorespiratory Monitoring: A Review

Systems for cardiorespiratory monitoring hold tremendous promise for many applications in clinical settings, harsh environments, sports science and telemonitoring. However, the translation in the real world is challenging because it is difficult to develop unobtrusive and comfortable systems with high metrological performance. Recent advances in fiber optic technology in the field of sensing and their application to instrument wearable systems can tackle the main issues in this field. In this work, we focused on the recent advances in cardiorespiratory monitoring of fiber Bragg grating (FBGs) sensors which are one of the most popular sensors based on fiber optic technology. We provide an overview of the FBGs working principle and performance. We also describe the most popular and promising configurations based on FBGs used for cardiorespiratory monitoring.

Psychological Predictors for Depression and Burnout Among German Junior Elite Athletes.

There exists a strong need for research in clinical sport psychology which does not merely gather information on prevalence rates for psychological disorders and case studies of affected athletes. Rather, research should also uncover the underlying psychological variables which increase the risk for depression and burnout in elite athletes. Many studies gather general factors (e.g., gender, injury, sport discipline) and stay on a more descriptive level. Both constructs (burnout and depression) are based on a temporal, stress-related process model assuming the development of either syndrome results from unfavorable personal (e.g., dysfunctional attitudes, perfectionism, negative coping strategies) or environmental (e.g., cohesion) factors coexisting with severe stressors (i.e., chronic stress). Integrating this knowledge, we propose a shared model for depression and burnout in athletes: a sport specific diathesis-stress model. The present longitudinal study assesses data throughout one sporting season to analyze predictors for both constructs in junior elite athletes. Hierarchical multiple linear regression analyses resulted in six predictors for best model fit. The following factors demonstrated a significant impact on predicting (a) burnout or (b) depression scores at the end of the season: dysfunctional attitudes (a and b), coping strategies (a and b), perfectionism (a), recovery (b), stress (a) and the level of depression at onset (b). Variables such as cohesion or attributional style did not significantly predict depression or burnout. The study supports the structure of a process model (diathesis-stress model) for burnout and depression with the assumption of temporal progression. With some vulnerabilities and their temporal, developmental link identified, prevention can become athlete-specific, effective and economical.