Weekly set volume and frequency are used to manipulate resistance training dosage. Previous research has identified higher weekly set volume as enhancing muscle hypertrophy and strength gains, but the nature of the dose-response relationship still needs to be investigated. Mixed evidence exists regarding the effects of higher weekly frequency.

Tactical athletes, including military personnel, firefighters and rescue responders, operate in unpredictable and extreme environments that impose high physical and cognitive demands with life-and-death stakes. Tactical operations demonstrate metabolic demands akin to elite sports. Unlike sports competitions, tactical operations often involve prolonged exertion, limited food/water, disrupted recovery windows and circadian rhythms. This review draws on sports nutrition research to adapt evidence-based strategies for tactical athletes, highlighting key overlaps and distinctions. First, achieving adequate optimal energy availability in tactical athletes is challenging because of unpredictable demands, which makes it important to leverage training sessions to optimise nutrition strategies and energy availability. Second, when operational timelines are predictable, sport nutrient timing principles can be applied. However, under tight operational timelines, tactical athletes should aim for 1-4 g·kg body mass of portable, easily digested carbohydrates with fluids in the 1-4 h before deployment, guided by practicality, logistics and individual gastrointestinal tolerance. When operations are expected to involve moderate-to-high intensity activity within the first 2 h, lower fibre, lower fat and rapidly digestible carbohydrate forms (e.g. gels, sports drinks or soft bars) may be preferred to minimise gastrointestinal discomfort. In such situations, aggressive recovery and rehydration post-operation should also be prioritised. Under high environmental heat, high carbohydrate (≥ 7 g·kg BM) and low-FODMAP (Fermentable Oligo-, Di-, Monosaccharides and Polyols) intakes may mitigate heat-induced physiological changes, which include increased carbohydrate oxidation and appetite suppression. Last, evidence for creatine, nitrate, beta-alanine and bicarbonate in tactical athletes closely reflects findings in sport populations. The use of caffeine, however, requires more careful consideration as it may disrupt sleep.

This study investigated thermoregulation and hydration dynamics in 80 runners (33 women, 41.3%; 47 men, 58.7%) during a 160-km ultra-endurance race with 9400 m of elevation gain in a tropical environment, where ambient temperatures ranged from 10.2 °C to 28.3 °C and relative humidity varied between 35 and 100%.

Rugby league tackles are a primary mechanism for head injuries, yet there is limited evidence on tackle-specific head kinematics in professional women's rugby league players.

High-carbohydrate fueling in cycling (defined as ≥ 100 g/h for this paper) has received significant media attention in recent years. Whether this practice improves performance, however, remains an unresolved issue in the scientific literature. The purpose of this narrative review is to provide an up-to-date analysis of the practice of high-carbohydrate fueling, with a specific focus on potential performance implications in professional cycling. Topics covered include historical carbohydrate intake guidelines, research directly comparing high-carbohydrate fueling with traditional fueling guidelines, theorized benefits of high-carbohydrate fueling specific to cycling, potential risks associated with high-carbohydrate fueling, and personalizing carbohydrate intakes. Among a small number of experimental studies that have compared high-carbohydrate fueling with somewhat lower rates (e.g., 60-90 g/h), there is not clear evidence that it reduces reliance on endogenous carbohydrate stores or improves performance. However, these studies have not closely mimicked the demands of multi-day and multi-week stage races, when ingesting carbohydrate at ≥ 100 g/h may be more likely to produce performance benefits. Observational data from professional cyclists suggest that carbohydrate consumption during racing is strongly associated with total daily carbohydrate intakes; therefore, ingesting carbohydrate at ≥ 100 g/h on the bike could facilitate performance over multiple days or weeks by enhancing glycogen resynthesis and recovery. In addition, circumstantial evidence suggests that high-carbohydrate fueling could reduce low energy availability, reduce within-day energy deficits, and stimulate the central nervous system. Personalizing carbohydrate intakes through individual assessments of exogenous carbohydrate oxidation is a novel strategy that should be further explored in the future.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a heterogeneous chronic lung condition often accompanied by comorbidities and systemic manifestations that affect the person's clinical condition and prognosis and often require specific treatment. Therefore, the management of COPD extends beyond treatment for the lungs per se. Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) should be considered as part of person-centered management, and supervised exercise training is a core component of this intervention. PR exercise training parameters (e.g., frequency, intensity, time, and type) should be individualized to maximize each individual's functional gains while targeting systemic manifestations and comorbidities. This manuscript presents evidence-based tailored recommendations for optimizing exercise interventions for people with COPD and comorbidities that significantly affect prognosis (e.g., mortality, hospitalizations) including cardiovascular disease (CVD) (e.g., chronic coronary syndrome, heart failure), CVD risk factors (e.g., type 2 diabetes mellitus [T2DM], hypertension), and sarcopenia. To achieve these goals, existing guidelines and evidence for exercise training in COPD, CVD, CVD risk factors, and sarcopenia have been reviewed to identify synergies between PR and cardiac rehabilitation, as well as the treatment of T2DM and sarcopenia. In addition, we provided clinical cases to illustrate how PR can be adapted to accommodate specific comorbidities. These examples offer practical guidance for tailoring exercise prescriptions within PR programs to address the unique needs of people with COPD and clinically relevant comorbidities, thereby enhancing overall treatment effectiveness and optimizing health outcomes.

Participation in sport offers numerous physiological, psychological, and social benefits, yet injury remains an inherent risk, particularly in collision-based sports. Increasing scrutiny surrounds these sports, especially for youth, with inconsistency in the age for introducing deliberate contact (e.g., body checking, tackle) and debate regarding proposals for banning high-risk actions to reduce injuries. This article explores the policies and controversies regarding how, and when, physical contact is introduced in sports. Current policies vary significantly across sports, sexes, and national jurisdictions, leading to inconsistent implementation and outcomes. We outline arguments for both delaying and lowering the contact introduction age, including implications for participation rates, skill acquisition, and injury risk. Raising the age may reduce injury history and cumulative head impacts, while earlier, progressive contact training may enhance technical competence. Growth, maturation and size discrepancies further complicate such policy decisions. Evidence supports multimodal approaches, including training guidelines (e.g., reduced contact in practices), neuromuscular training, and rule modifications, to enhance safety without compromising play. Weight-based categorisation and bio-banding (grouping players by attributes associated with growth and/or maturation instead of chronological age) strategies show potential for injury-risk reduction but lack comprehensive evaluation. Despite polarised opinions, developing sport-specific recommendations on best practices for contact introduction remains critical to ensuring athlete welfare and sustainable participation in collision sports.

Understanding the impact of training sessions on physiological, psychological, and immunological responses is crucial for adequate training periodization and preventing negative influences on health, training, and performance.

This study simulated the effect of reducing contact training duration on overall in-season head acceleration event (HAE) exposure within men's and women's rugby union.

Physical exercise has been proposed to enhance cardiovascular autonomic function; however, current evidence in older populations remains controversial.

Hamstring injuries are the most common muscle injuries in sport, particularly in football. Among these, injuries to the distal musculotendinous T-junction (DMTJ) of the biceps femoris remain poorly characterized and are frequently associated with prolonged recovery and high reinjury rates. The DMTJ is a complex, anatomically variable structure formed by the confluence of the long and short heads of the biceps femoris.

To date, multiple studies have presented the association of the c.1729C>T polymorphism in the ACTN3 gene with non-contact musculoskeletal injuries, but there are discrepancies and a lack of consensus in this area of research.

Soccer is a high-intensity sport that requires high levels of physical fitness, including balance, change of direction (CoD), speed and power. The FIFA 11 + program has been widely promoted to enhance physical fitness and reduce injury occurrence.

Pacing strategy is a key determinant of endurance performance, enabling athletes to regulate effort to optimise outcomes. While various pacing profiles (e.g. self-selected, fast-start, even, or slow) have been proposed, their comparative effects on performance remain unclear because of conflicting findings and methodological variability across studies.

Monitoring menstrual health has gained popularity in sports like football as an opportunity to identify recurring symptoms or adverse symptoms related to the menstrual or hormonal contraceptive cycle; to recognize challenges related to low energy availability (LEA), low carbohydrate availability, overreaching/overtraining, and/or overall lifestyle stress due to their association with menstrual disturbance/dysfunction; to be informative in contextualizing athlete training status, e.g., training load and performance progression; and to promote and empower body/health literacy and overall health in female athletes. Monitoring menstrual health may also offer valuable insights to inform decisions regarding training and recovery. In team sports like football, where training loads and match schedules are relatively uniform across the squad, individualized strategies to effectively manage recurring adverse symptoms or menstrual disturbance/dysfunction may be necessary to ensure that all athletes can perform and recover optimally. The purpose of this article is to describe the rationale and suggested approaches for tracking menstrual and hormonal contraceptive cycles (including menstrual disturbance/dysfunction) in field settings to facilitate monitoring of menstrual health to potentially contextualize the other health and performance data. Herein, we assess the feasibility and potential limitations of different tracking methods from traditional paper and pencil records to more sophisticated digital applications and biochemical measures for use in real-world settings.

Deceleration is a critical locomotor skill for athletes competing in multi-directional speed sports. Greater deceleration can help athletes perform rapid reductions in velocity facilitating rapid changes of direction, whilst the high mechanical forces associated with braking can be linked to a heightened risk of fatigue, tissue damage and injuries. Despite the clear importance of deceleration in sport, research and applied practices in the past have predominantly focused on assessing an athlete's sprint acceleration and maximum velocity capabilities, neglecting the necessity to be able to decelerate. With tactical evolutions in sports demanding athletes to accelerate and attain higher sprinting speeds more frequently in competition, there is increased necessity to decelerate and to be able to accurately assess this movement skill. Therefore, the aim of this article is to discuss methodological and practical considerations of the protocols and measurement technologies that can be used to assess deceleration in an applied field-based environment. The article highlights a range of different protocols (i.e. change of direction and acceleration-deceleration ability tests) and measurement technologies (i.e. radar, laser, video, global navigation satellite systems, inertial measurement units and motorised resistance devices) that can be used to evaluate deceleration and some of the advantages and disadvantages of each. Key metrics used to measure deceleration performance, and the kinematics underpinning deceleration technique are highlighted. Given the performance, health and injury-risk implications associated with deceleration, assessment of this movement skill should be given high priority within any athlete multi-disciplinary support system.

Exercise triggers a proportional inflammatory response that is crucial for muscle fiber repair and adaptation. However, excessive or chronic inflammation can delay recovery and increase injury risk. Biomarkers such as creatine kinase and interleukins are commonly used to assess muscle damage and inflammation, respectively, but they have limitations in specificity and sensitivity. However, lipid mediators that signal all inflammatory events with distinct roles in pro-inflammatory, anti-inflammatory, and pro-resolving phases could provide a more complete understanding of the inflammatory response to exercise. In this review, we discuss the limitations of current biomarkers and the potential of lipid mediators to theoretically offer more precise insights into the inflammatory processes following exercise. Further research is needed to establish standardized protocols for measuring lipid mediators and to understand their temporal dynamics in relation to inflammation and recovery. This knowledge could lead to improved strategies for monitoring and enhancing recovery in athletes.