EXSC 2000 - Andrews

How Do Emotions and Feelings Regulate Physical Activity? by Darko Jekauc; Ralf Brand doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01145 Up to date the scientific discussion about how frequency and regularity of physical activity can be increased is dominated by social-cognitive models. However, increasing evidence suggests that emotions and feelings have greater influence on physical activity than originally assumed. Generally speaking, humans possess an evaluative system with a basic action tendency to approach pleasurable events and to avoid aversive ones. Evaluative responses to a behavior and associated emotional states may influence a decision regarding whether or not to repeat being physically active. Generally, behavior associated with positive evaluations has a higher probability of being repeated than behaviors without such an association. On the contrary, an association with negative evaluations tends to decrease the probability of repeating to be physically active. Hence, evaluative responses to physical activity or the related situation can be an important aspect in the process of physical activity maintenance. Several social-cognitive models of behavior change and maintenance were recently extended to take the influence of affective responses into account, in a way that variables already included in the models (e.g. outcome expectancies or attitudes) were more clearly articulated into their cognitive and affective components. For example, with regard to Social Cognitive Theory, Gellert, Ziegelmann and Schwarzer (2012) proposed to distinguish between affective and health-related outcome expectancies, and in the Theory of Planned Behavior, researchers suggested to differentiate between cognitive and affective attitudes. The results of these and other studies suggest that affective components make a unique contribution to the explanation of the physical activity behavior. Other examples come from social cognition research, where it was shown that automatic evaluative responses are part of our everyday life and that they decisively influence health behavior. Accordingly, there is evidence that people who exercise regularly hold more positive automatic evaluations with exercise than non-exercisers.

Mental Health Challenges in Elite Sport: Balancing Risk with Reward by Tadhg Eoghan MacIntyre; Judy Van Raalte; Britton W. Brewer; Marc Jones A growing research base suggests that the high performance environment has the potential to be a risky domain for many elite performers. This evidence has accumulated across disparate topics relating to elite sport including eating disorders among males, post-event depression, stigma towards accessing service provision in psychology and the emergence of organizational stress as a catalyst for mental health challenges in sport systems. At present, while it is challenging to quantify the precise extent and nature of the problem it is critical that stakeholders in high performance sport become aware of the current trend. This research topic addresses this problem of mental health challenges from an interdisciplinary perspective. We welcome a broad range of empirical and conceptual and review submissions including case studies, single cohort investigations, meta-analytic and narrative reviews, and commentaries. Ideally, submissions should be theoretically or conceptually driven. In addition to revisiting issues such as overtraining, burnout and dropout based on the Mental Health Model of Sport Performance, we are especially interested in highlighting the new issues that have arisen in elite sport which are not linked to training load. For example, Eating disorders and disordered eating have been linked to sub-cultures within for example aesthetic sports, and these have been shown not simply to be specific to female athletes Moreover, the Female Athlete Triad has been re-conceptualised as a challenge of relative energy deficiency syndrome. Similarly the prevalence of sport injuries including concussion and other sport related injuries are only recently coming to the fore in elite and professional sport settings. The aforementioned issues would fit aptly with our research topic. Similarly, interventions that are designed to address mental health issues in sport also fits within our remit. For instance, attempts at screening elite athletes pre-season, educating them on mental health first aid, de-briefing athletes post-championship or providing resilience training are among the array of interventions now employed. This research topic will provide a forum for investigations on the etiology, prevalence and prevention of mental health challenges in elite sport from an interdisciplinary perspective which is necessary to understand more precisely the balance between the risks and rewards of elite sport.

Philosophical Issues in Sport Science by Ryall, Emily The role and value of science within sport increases with ever greater professionalization and commercialization. Scientific and technological innovations are devised to increase performance, ensure greater accuracy of measurement and officiating, reduce risks of harm, enhance spectatorship, and raise revenues. However, such innovations inevitably come up against epistemological and metaphysical problems related to the nature of sport and physical competition. This Special Issue identifies and explores key and contemporary philosophical issues in relation to the science of sport and exercise. It is divided into three sections: 1. Scientific evidence, causation, and sport; 2. Science technology and sport officiating; and 3. Scientific influences on the construction of sport. It brings together scholars working on philosophical problems in sport to examine issues related to the values and assumptions behind sport and exercise science and key problems resulting from these and to provide recommendations for improving its practice.

Post-Exercise Recovery: Fundamental and Interventional Physiology by Sergej M. Ostojic DOI: 10.3389/978-2-88919-855-9 Physiological responses after maximal and submaximal exercise are routinely monitored in a plethora of diseases (e.g. cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, asthma, neuromuscular disorders), and normal populations (e.g. athletes, youth, elderly), while slower or irregular post-exercise recovery usually indicates poor health and/or low fitness level. Abnormal post-exercise recovery (as assessed via blunted post-exercise heart rate dynamics) helps to predict the presence and severity of coronary artery disease, while differences in recovery outcomes in athletes might discriminate between fit and unfit individuals. Disturbances in post-exercise recovery might be due to acute or persistent changes in: (1) adaptive responses mediated by the autonomic nervous system and vasodilator substances, (2) cellular bioenergetics, and/or (3) muscular plasticity. Preliminary evidence suggests possible role of time-dependent modulation of nitric oxide synthase and adenosine receptors during post-exercise recovery, yet no molecular attributes of post-exercise recovery are revealed so far. Currently several markers of post-exercise recovery are used (e.g. heart rate measures, hormone profiles, biochemical and hematological indices); however none of them meets all criteria to make its use generally accepted as the gold standard. In addition, recent studies suggest that different pharmacological agents and dietary interventions, or manipulative actions (e.g. massage, cold-water immersion, compression garments, athletic training) administered before, during or immediately after exercise could positively affect post-exercise recovery. There is a growing interest to provide more evidence-based data concerning the effectiveness and safety of traditional and novel interventions to affect post-exercise recovery. The goals of this research topic are to critically evaluate the current advances on mechanisms and clinical implications of post-exercise recovery, and to summarize recent experimental data from interventional studies. This knowledge may help to identify the hierarchy of key mechanisms, and recognize methods to monitor and improve post-exercise recovery in both health and disease.

Regulation of Endurance Performance: New Frontiers by Florentina J. Hettinga; Andrew Renfree; Benjamin Pageaux; Hollie S. Jones; Jo Corbett; Dominic Micklewright; Alexis R. Mauger (Ed.) doi: 10.3389/fphys.2017.00118 Successful endurance performance requires the integration of multiple physiological and psychological systems, working together to regulate exercise intensity in a way that will reduce time taken or increase work done. The systems that ultimately limit performance of the task are hotly contested, and may depend on a variety of factors including the type of task, the environment, external influences, training status of the individual and a host of psychological constructs. These factors can be studied in isolation, or inclusively as a whole-body or integrative system. A reductionist approach has traditionally been favoured, leading to a greater understanding and emphasis on muscle and cardiovascular physiology, but the role of the brain and how this integrates multiple systems is gaining momentum. However, these differing approaches may have led to false dichotomy, and now with better understanding of both fields, there is a need to bring these perspectives together. The divergent viewpoints of the limitations to human performance may have partly arisen because of the different exercise models studied. These can broadly be defined as open loop (where a fixed intensity is maintained until task disengagement), or closed loop (where a fixed distance is completed in the fastest time), which may involve whole-body or single-limb exercise. Closed loop exercise allows an analysis of how exercise intensity is self-regulated (i.e. pacing), and thus may better reflect the demands of competitive endurance performance. However, whilst this model can monitor changes in pacing, this is often at the expense of detecting subtle differences in the measured physiological or psychological variables of interest. Open loop exercise solves this issue, but is limited by its more restrictive exercise model. Nonetheless, much can be learnt from both experimental approaches when these constraints are recognised. Indeed, both models appear equally effective in examining changes in performance, and so the researcher should select the exercise model which can most appropriately test the study hypothesis. Given that a multitude of both internal (e.g. muscle fatigue, perception of effort, dietary intervention, pain etc.) and external (e.g. opponents, crowd presence, course topography, extrinsic reward etc.) factors likely contribute to exercise regulation and endurance performance, it may be that both models are required to gain a comprehensive understanding. Consequently, this research topic seeks to bring together papers on endurance performance from a variety of paradigms and exercise models, with the overarching aim of comparing, examining and integrating their findings to better understand how exercise is regulated and how this may (or may not) limit performance. To explore new frontiers, we welcome the submission of original research, review and perspective articles on endurance performance, which specifically consider the scope and impact of their findings in the broader context of exercise regulation.

The Role of Physical Fitness on Cardiovascular Responses to Stress by Arto J. Hautala; Anthony S. Leicht; Daniel Boullosa DOI: 10.3389/978-2-88919-463-6 Cardiovascular responses to physical and/ or mental stressors has been a topic of great interest for some time. For example, significant changes of cardiovascular control and reactivity have been highlighted as important mechanisms for the protective effect of exercise as a simple and effective, non medical therapy for many pathologies. However, despite the great number of studies performed to date (e.g. >54,000 entries in Pubmed for “cardiovascular stress”), important questions of the role stress has on cardiovascular function still remain. For instance, What factors account for the different cardiovascular responses between mental and physical stressors? How do these different components of the cardiovascular system interact during stress? Which cardiovascular responses to stress are the most important for identifying normal, depressed, and enhanced cardiovascular function? Can these stress-induced responses assist with patient diagnosis and prognosis? What impact does physical fitness have on the relationship between cardiovascular function and health? The current topic examined our current understanding of cardiovascular responses to stress and the significant role that physical fitness has on these responses for improved function and health. Manuscripts focusing on heart rate variability (HRV), heart rate recovery, and other novel cardiovascular assessments were especially encouraged.

Sport and Exercise Science by Matjaz Merc (Ed.) DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.69756 Professional and semiprofessional sports as well as excessive amateur exercise inevitably lead to some degree of musculoskeletal injury once in a sportsman's career. Some injuries are represented as chronic injuries, which can result in irreversible long-term tissue changes and deformities. The subject of this book is to represent the up-to-date knowledge about etiology, pathogenesis, diagnosis, management, and prevention of chronic injuries or sport-related long-term changes in locomotor system.