All Alone We Go Faster, Together We Go Further: The Necessary Evolution of Professional and Elite Sporting Environment to Bridge the Gap Between Research and Practice

The high-performance sport environment: laying the foundation for a new research topic

Talent development and dual career literature have drawn attention to the importance of the environment in athlete development and highlighted that certain types of environments are more successful at supporting athletes to develop and perform. No such literature exists at the elite level, and it remains unclear how high-performance sport environments (HPSEs) can foster both the current and future capacities of athletes while simultaneously striving to support their wellbeing. The aim of this paper is therefore, to provide the foundation required for this question to be explored. Through the integration of five pivotal discourses-athlete career development, applied elite sport psychology, the holistic ecological approach in sport psychology, athlete mental health, and elite sport policy-this paper provides a conceptual definition of the HPSE and a typology of environments. While no research has yet made the HPSE the central object of investigation, many adjacent lines of research point to factors that may be characteristics of HPSEs that support performance and wellbeing, including: a holistic approach that balances performance objectives with athletedevelopment and wellbeing, a facilitative organisational culture, and a personalised and caring coaching philosophy. This paper has implications for stakeholders and key staff working in HPSEs who are interested in improving the organisation of their environment and the wellbeing and performance of their athletes.

The Benefits of Research-Embedded Training Camps in Sport Sciences

BACKGROUND

Sport scientists aim to enhance athletic performance by developing, implementing, and evaluating evidence-based strategies. However, a common challenge to maximize sport science's impact is the limited involvement of "research end users" (ie, athletes, coaches, and practitioners) in contextualizing these strategies. To address this, research-embedded training camps (RETCs) offer a collaborative opportunity bringing together all stakeholders to tackle real-world challenges by blending scientific insight with practical application for better knowledge translation or production.

PURPOSE

This invited commentary explores the behind-the-scenes aspects of conducting successful RETCs. We discuss opportunities and challenges involved, drawing on our practical experience with environmental stress interventions.

EVIDENCE

Implementing an RETC requires a tailored intervention, shaped by the athlete group, research questions, and available resources-essentially answering the who, what, why, when, and where questions. Key principles for success include an athlete-centered focus, a diverse multidisciplinary team, scientific rigor, balancing control with flexibility, and adaptability. A coconstructed design ensures that the intervention remains scientifically relevant and practical and directly addresses real-world needs of athletes.

CONCLUSION

Through the lens of environmental stress interventions, RETCs should prioritize practicality, collaboration, and athlete-focused approaches. Conducting interventions with athletes rather than on them can significantly enhance performance and support evidence-based training strategies (knowledge translation) and/or provide new actionable insights (knowledge production).

Prevalence of Specific Mood Profile Clusters among Elite and Youth Athletes at a Brazilian Sports Club

Those responsible for elite and youth athletes are increasingly aware of the need to balance the quest for superior performance with the need to protect the physical and psychological wellbeing of athletes. As a result, regular assessment of risks to mental health is a common feature in sports organisations. In the present study, the Brazil Mood Scale (BRAMS) was administered to 898 athletes (387 female, 511 male, age range: 12-44 years) at a leading sports club in Rio de Janeiro using either "past week" or "right now" response timeframes. Using seeded k-means cluster analysis, six distinct mood profile clusters were identified, referred to as the iceberg, surface, submerged, shark fin, inverse iceberg, and inverse Everest profiles. The latter three profiles, which are associated with varying degrees of increased risk to mental health, were reported by 238 athletes (26.5%). The prevalence of these three mood clusters varied according to the response timeframe (past week > right now) and the sex of the athletes (female > male). The prevalence of the iceberg profile varied by athlete sex (male > female), and age (12-17 years > 18+ years). Findings supported use of the BRAMS as a screening tool for the risk of psychological issues among athletes in Brazilian sports organisations.

Building Bridges Instead of Putting Up Walls: Connecting the "Teams" to Improve Soccer Players' Support

The increase in the economic value of soccer occurred in parallel with an increase in competing demands. Therefore, clubs and federations evolved to greater specialization (e.g., state-of-the-art facilities and high-profile expertise staff) to support players' performance and health. Currently, player preparation is far from exclusively club or national team centered, and the lack of control in each player's environment can be more prevalent than expected. For example, an elite group of professional players faces disruptions in the season club-oriented planification due to involvement in national teams. Moreover, as elite players' financial resources grow, it is common for them to employ specialized personal staff (e.g., strength and conditioning, nutritionist, and sports psychologist) to assist in their preparation, resulting in complex three-fold relationships (i.e., club, player's staff, national team). Although efforts have been made to improve communication with and transition from the club to the national team supervision, this new reality (club-players' staff) may generate serious compound role-related problems and difficulties in monitoring load and training adaptation and having a unified message. Therefore, efforts must be implemented to ensure a more informed management of the players' performance environment, where the existence and impact of these various personal staff are considered to avoid a long-term non-zero sum for all intervening parties. If left unchecked, current professional thinking may collide or overlap, potentially triggering conflict escalation and impairing athletic performance or health, especially if effective communication routes are not adequately established. Moreover, diluted personal responsibility regarding performance may ensue, resulting in decreased productivity from all involved, which may cause more harm than benefits for the player's overall health and performance. This emerging reality calls for developing a joint working framework (i.e., between the player's personalized support team and the clubs' team) and better managing of a player-centered process.

Olympic Sports Science-Bibliometric Analysis of All Summer and Winter Olympic Sports Research

Introduction: The body of scientific literature on sports and exercise continues to expand. The summer and winter Olympic games will be held over a 7-month period in 2021-2022. Objectives: We took this rare opportunity to quantify and analyze the main bibliometric parameters (i.e., the number of articles and citations) across all Olympic sports to weigh and compare their importance and to assess the structure of the "sport sciences" field. The present review aims to perform a bibliometric analysis of Olympic sports research. We quantified the following topics: (1) the most investigated sports; (2) the main journals in which the studies are published; (3) the main factors explaining sport-specific scientific attractiveness; (4) the influence of being in the Olympic programme, economic weight, and local influences on research output; and (5) which research topic is the most investigated across sports. Methods: We searched 116 sport/exercise journals on PubMed for the 40 summer and 10 winter Olympic sports. A total of 34,038 articles were filtered for a final selection of 25,003 articles (23,334 articles on summer sports and 1,669 on winter sports) and a total of 599,820 citations. Results and Discussion: Nine sports [football (soccer), cycling, athletics, swimming, distance & marathon running, basketball, baseball, tennis, and rowing] were involved in 69% of the articles and 75% of the citations. Football was the most cited sport, with 19.7 and 26.3% of the total number of articles and citations, respectively. All sports yielded some scientific output, but 11 sports (biathlon, mountain biking, archery, diving, trampoline, skateboarding, skeleton, modern pentathlon, luge, bobsleigh, and curling) accumulated a total of fewer than 50 publications. While ice hockey is the most prominently represented winter sport in the scientific literature, winter sports overall have produced minor scientific output. Further analyses show a large scientific literature on team sports, particularly American professional sports (i.e., baseball, basketball, and ice hockey) and the importance of inclusion in the Olympic programme to increasing scientific interest in "recent" sports (i.e., triathlon and rugby sevens). We also found local/cultural influence on the occurrence of a sport in a particular "sport sciences" journal. Finally, the relative distribution of six main research topics (i.e., physiology, performance, training and testing, injuries and medicine, biomechanics, and psychology) was large across sports and reflected the specific performance factors of each sport.

Assessment of the Strength Parameters of the Quadriceps Femoris Muscles in Polish University Students after a 3-Week Program of Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation Using the RSQ1 Method

A rehabilitative program for patients who lose strength and muscle mass along with the ability to perform intensive exercises is lacking. We developed a 3-week training program based on neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) using a RSQ1 device (modulated current resulting from the overlapping of two-component currents) for RSQ1 electrostimulation to improve strength parameters of the quadricep femoris muscles and compare its effectiveness to isometric training. Nineteen university students were randomly divided into the NMES group (10 sessions) and the control group who trained. We measured the circumference of the thigh, as well as peak torques of the flexor and extensor muscles before and after the start and after the end of the training program. Both tested training programs gave similar results. Differences between measured parameters were not significant except for differences in the peak torques of the knee flexors (9.9% for left limb; p = 0.2135 vs. 7.8% for rift limb; p = 0.2135) and the circumference of the left thigh—2% for both (left p = 0.5839 and right p = 0.1088). Comparable results of the tested training programs suggest that NMES is a good alternative for people who cannot perform exercises, but want to maintain or improve their physical fitness.