Effects of home confinement on physical activity, nutrition, and sleep quality during the COVID-19 outbreak in amateur and elite athletes

Introduction

Despite the progress in the management of the pandemic caused by COVID-19, it is necessary to continue exploring and explaining how this situation affected the athlete population around the world to improve their circumstances and reduce the negative impact of changes in their lifestyle conditions that were necessitated due to the pandemic. The aim of this study was to analyze the moderating influence of physical activity (PA) and dietary habits on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic experience on sleep quality in elite and amateur athletes.

Materials and methods

A total of 1,420 elite (40.1%) and amateur (59.9%) athletes (41% women; 59% men) from 14 different countries participated in a cross-sectional design study. Data were collected using a battery of questionnaires that identified sociodemographic data, sleep quality index, PA levels, dietary habits, and the athletes' perception of their experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. Means and standard deviations were calculated for each variable. The analysis of variances and the correlation between variables were carried out with non-parametric statistics. A simple moderation effect was calculated to analyze the interaction between PA or dietary habits on the perception of the COVID-19 experience effect on sleep quality in elite and amateur athletes.

Results

The PA level of elite athletes was higher than amateur athletes during COVID-19 (p < 0.001). However, the PA level of both categories of athletes was lower during COVID-19 than pre-COVID-19 (p < 0.01). In addition, amateurs had a higher diet quality than elite athletes during the pandemic (p = 0.014). The perception of the COVID-19 experience as controllable was significantly higher (p = 0.020) among elite athletes. In addition, two moderating effects had significant interactions. For amateur athletes, the PA level moderated the effect of controllable COVID-19 experience on sleep quality [F _(3,777) = 3.05; p = 0.028], while for elite athletes, the same effect was moderated by dietary habits [F _(3,506) = 4.47, p = 0.004].

Conclusion

Elite athletes had different lifestyle behaviors compared to amateurs during the COVID-19 lockdown. Furthermore, the relevance of maintaining high levels of PA for amateurs and good quality dietary habits by elite athletes was noted by the moderating effect that both variables had on the influence of the controllable experience during the COVID-19 pandemic on sleep quality.

Competitive Recovery-Stress and Mood States in Mexican Youth Athletes

Background

Monitoring recovery–stress balance in sport is becoming more relevant to prevent training maladaptation and reach the optimal performance for each athlete. The use of questionnaires that identify the athlete’s recovery–stress state have much acceptance in sports due to reliability and useful, furthermore for its low cost. Identifying possible differences between sport modalities and sex is important to determine specific needs and possible intervention ways to keep a recovery–stress balance. The aim was to analyze the differences in the recovery–stress state and mood states by sex and sport type during the competitive phase in young Mexican athletes. As a secondary objective, the psychometric properties of the Mexican version of the Recovery–Stress Questionnaire for Athletes (RESTQ-Sport) were analyzed.

Methods

A cross-sectional study was carried on with 461 athletes (61% women and 39% men), 17.95 (±1.2) years old, from six sports disciplines. The RESTQ-Sport and Profile of Mood States (POMS) were applied in a single moment. Differences by sex and sports modality were analyzed. RESTQ-Sport’s confirmatory factor analysis was performed after the stress and recovery theoretical structure of two stress (general and sport) and two recovery (general and sport) dimensions, and last, the concurrent validation with the POMS was carried on.

Results

Significant differences by sex were found in the General Recovery and Sport Stress dimensions of the RESTQ-Sport as well as Vigor factor of the POMS, being higher for men; furthermore, both the Sport Recovery dimension of RESTQ-Sport and Cholera and the Fatigue and Depression factors from POMS also had differences by sport type, showing a less recovery and high stress for individual sport athletes. Goodness-of-fit indexes of the model for the RESTQ-Sport were acceptable. Pearson’s correlation between questionnaires was moderate (p < 0.05).

Conclusion

The recovery–stress state shows differences in the function of sex and sport modality. More special attention is suggested for women and individual sport athletes. The higher punctuation for men compared with women in sport stress dimension did not negatively affect the recovery–stress balance for male athletes. Finally, the Mexican context adaptation of the RESTQ-Sport provides a psychometric instrument suitable to assess the recovery–stress balance in Mexican athletes.

A new approach to quantify internal and external training load for intermittent sports

The aim of this study was to propose a modified training impulse method (TRIMP) to quantify internal training load (ITL) in intermittent team sports and examine its relationship with external training load (ETL) during a preparatory period. Over 12 weeks, 11 male youth field hockey players (14.41 ± 0.51 years) were evaluated in regard to their ETL using triaxial accelerometers (Actigraph) and data was later contrasted with ITL, which was measured using heart rate (HR) monitors (Polar Team2) by four different TRIMP methods: Banister´s (bTRIMP), Edwards´s (eTRIMP), individualized (iTRIMP) and modified (mTRIMP). A correlation was found between HR (beat/min) and ETL (r = 0.699, R2 = 0.489, p < 0.01) and among TRIMP methods (r = 0.808-0.984, p < 0.01), however, the consistency between methods did not agree (p < 0.01). The ETL correlated in all TRIMP methods: bTRIMP (r = 0.509, R2 = 0.259, p < 0.01), eTRIMP (r = 0.336, R2 = 0.113, p < 0.01), iTRIMP (r = 0.224, R2 = 0.050, p < 0.01) and mTRIMP (r = 0.516, R2 = 0.267, p < 0.01). The proposed mTRIMP can be a valid option for ITL quantification; furthermore, indexes combining ITL and ETL should be used for a complete training assessment.

Note: Device for obtaining volumetric, three-component velocity fields inside cylindrical cavities

We describe a device designed and built to obtain the three-component, steady state velocity field in the whole volume occupied by a fluid in motion contained in a cavity with cylindrical walls. The prototype comprises a two-camera stereoscopic particle image velocimetry system mounted on a platform that rotates around the volume under analysis and a slip ring arrangement that transmits data from the rotating sensors to the data storage elements. Sample observations are presented for natural convection in a cylindrical container but other flows can be analyzed.