Andrew Scott Perrotta

1. Inter-collegiate female ice hockey demands short bursts of high-intensity effort interspersed with periods of active recovery, creating a complex and physiologically taxing environment for athle...

Background: University ice hockey players in North America have five years of eligibility, during which they must show continuous physical and technical advancement. This setup requires deliberate, evidence-based development programs to maximize each athlete’s potential across their tenure. With annual roster turnover, coaches are expected to raise the team’s baseline performance each season, demanding systematic, longitudinal strategies that align individual growth with program-wide gains. This study aimed to examine within-season and between-season changes in body composition and athletic performance in Canadian university female ice hockey players over three consecutive seasons. Methods: A total of 45 athletes volunteered to participate across a three-year period. Body composition was examined during the pre-, mid-, and post-season periods of each year. Musculoskeletal function and anaerobic performa nce were measured in a laboratory setting during the pre- and post-season period of each year. Results: Body composition showed no significant within- or between-season changes, while musculoskeletal performance declined significantly in the post-season of 2023/24. Anaerobic performance (Wingate test) was significantly reduced post-season in 2023/24, whereas 2024/25 exhibited significant post-season alterations (both improvements and declines) and a significant difference in Wingate results between 2023/24 and 2024/25. Within- and between-season differences in 2024/25 may reflect a reduced sample size due to graduating players. Conclusion: Within-season declines in performance suggest cumulative fatigue and insufficient recovery, implying that current training and recovery protocols fail to maintain or restore physiological function over a season.

Background: The assessment of body composition can be conducted using a variety of devices, each providing practitioners unique advantages such as cost effectiveness, efficiency, accessibility, and accuracy. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the precision of three bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) devices when compared to air displacement plethysmography (BOD POD). Methods: A large-scale study involving 617 undergraduate kinesiology students (♀ = 342 | ♂ = 275) participated in this study. Participants had a mean ( SD) age of 21.2 2.0 y, a height of 171.9 9.9 cm, and a weight of 71.6 15.2 kg. Each participant completed a body composition assessment using the following BIA equipment: Tanita BC-568, Tanita BF-683W, and InBody 230 to estimate body fat (%). Air plethysmography (BOD POD) was used as the criterion method for deriving body composition. Order of assessments were randomized and were performed 1hr apart on the same day. Results: All data sets were positively skewed and determined to be non-normally distributed after conducting a Shapiro-wilk assessment (p < 0.05). Statistically significant differences in the mean absolute error between the criterion and each BIA device were observed: Tanita-568 (MAE = 4.8, p < 0.0001), Tanita-683 (MAE = 5.8, p < 0.0001) and InBody 230 (MAE = 4.6, p = 0.046). The calculated effect size between each BIA device and the criterion revealed trivial differences (ES 0.16). Conclusion: Overall, the InBody 230 BIA device displayed the strongest agreement with the BOD POD.

Female university ice hockey players experience elevated and sustained cardiovascular stress during training and competition. There remains limited research on the “exercise dose–response” in female ice hockey players. The purpose of this study was to examine daily and weekly changes in cardiac autonomic activity across a competitive season, and to examine its association with accumulated exercise stress. Twenty-one female ice hockey players wore chest strap heart rate monitors to quantify exercise heart rate dynamics into a training load (TL) metric and time (min) performing high-intensity activity (HIA) during training and competition. Cardiac autonomic activity was expressed as both resting heart rate (RHR) and the root mean squared of successive R-R intervals (rMSSD) and was recorded immediately upon awakening each morning. The association between HRV and both TL (r = −0.420, p = 0.058) and HIA (r = −0.420, p = 0.058) was observed. The association between RHR and both TL (r = 0.109, p = 0.638) and HIA (r = 0.150, p = 0.516) was observed. rMSSD fell below the typical error for ~50% of games. In conclusion, HRV demonstrated greater sensitivity to exercise stress than RHR for quantifying the dose–response to on-ice exercise stress.

Context: The gold standard for examining cardiorespiratory performance (i.e., maximal oxygen uptake (V˙O_2max)) involves completing a cardiopulmonary test, which requires both time and trained personnel. In comparison, anaerobic exercise tests examine musculoskeletal performance in a much shorter time. Current evidence suggests that oxygen consumption increases rapidly during maximal effort and that V˙O_2max may be reached within 90 s during maximal exercise. Objective: The aim of this study was to systematically review the literature to determine if anaerobic exercise tests could examine both V˙O_2max and anaerobic performance in healthy individuals. Design: This registered review was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. Eligibility Criteria: Eligible articles published until March 2024 were found in PubMed and EBSCO. Study Selection: After screening 1425 studies, a total of 7 studies were assessed. Main Outcome Measures: Both aerobic and anaerobic protocols and their associated V˙O_2max values were extracted along with the percentage of measured V˙O_2max that could be accounted for in the anaerobic test. Results: All studies used cycle ergometers with a range of protocols to assess V˙O_2max using both aerobic and anaerobic tests. The maximal percentage of V˙O_2max accounted for in anaerobic tests across the seven studies ranged from 91.0% to 101.2%, with the nearest association of 99.7% found using 60-s Wingate test cycling against a reduced load protocol of 9.5% to 7.5% of the subject’s body mass. Results from the meta-analysis demonstrate higher V˙O_2max values in traditional exercise tests compared with anaerobic tests (effect size, 0.88; 95% confidence interval, 0.68–1.08). Conclusion: This review suggests that attaining a similar V˙O_2max when using traditional graded exercise tests and anaerobic tests largely depends on the testing protocol. Further research using standardized testing protocols is warranted to establish the utility of brief anaerobic tests for examining cardiorespiratory performance.

Understanding the dose-response to exercise has become the focal point of a sport scientists' responsibility. The complex physiology of an athlete requires practitioners to develop a comprehensive "fingerprint", unique to the athletes' personal response to exercise, training methodologies, and periodization. The dose-response to exercise as described by (Banister et al., 1992) typically involves an initial, brief period of fatigue, that can develop into long-term improvement in biological function if appropriate rest and recovery is provided. This model is largely based on Selye's explanation of the fundamental reaction to experiencing whole body stress over a continuous period, whereby positive adaptations or exhaustion can occur depending on the sustained stress experienced (Selye, 1950). The "dose" of exercise can be quantified into a training load metric using either wearable technology (Perrotta et al., 2018) or a subjective rating of perceived exertion (Perrotta et al., 2017;Perrotta & Warburton, 2018), that can be compared to the resulting physiological "response" (Perrotta et al., 2019;Perrotta, 2020). When examined together, practitioners can make informed decisions when prescribing impending training sessions depending on the "response" to the "dose" of exercise. For example, wearable devices that included GPS technology can accurately measure speed and distance of a training session (i.e. the "dose"). Combined with information from a simple heart rate monitor (i.e. the "response"), coaches and practitioners can periodically evaluate the heart rate vs. speed relationship in the field as an indirect marker of exercise economy/efficiency and may indirectly serve to indicate states of transient or long-lasting fatigue (Fletcher & Tomkins-Lane, 2021;Smith et al., 2002). Analyzing the exercise dose-response relationship can be valuable to coaches, athletes and practitioners. In a 2012 survey of coaches and sport science support staff, Taylor et al., (2012) showed that 91 per cent of respondents used some form of a training monitoring system. In this survey, 70 per cent of these respondents indicated the focus was on 'load quantification' and the monitoring of fatigue or recovery to "prevent overtraining, reduce injuries, monitor the effectiveness of the training programs and ensure maintenance of performance" (Taylor et al., 2012). This Research Topic of Frontiers in Physiology and Sports and Active Living, contains four manuscripts where the primary purpose focused on analyzing the exercise dose-response relationship to improve athletic development. Three original articles (Perrotta et combination of the two offered greater strength and power gains. They demonstrate that all three strength intervention strategies equally improved upper and lower body strength and power, with only significant group differences found between peak power output at 30% of 1 repetition max. This may suggest that unilateral or a combination unilateral and bilateral strength training regime is superior to bilateral training alone, at least for this specific strength and power measure. This special topic edition provides coaches and practitioners novel insight into the dose-repose to various forms of exercise, and the interplay between physiological function and human performance. Although adaptations from exercise are often evaluated using a pre and post mesocycle approach, this form of assessment is retrospective in nature, and limits the understanding of athlete's response over duration of the training period. Unremitting developments in wearable technology allow integrative support staff to monitoring athletes physiological response during and post exercise (i.e. dose-response) in real-time. This immediate feedback allows evidence-based decisions towards adapting present training sessions to mitigate fatigue, or include additional exercise, to ensure athletic development over the course of each mesocycle. Sports scientists working within a team environment are encouraged to published comprehensive data sets that display the utility of wearable technology for examining the dose-response from daily training in elite athletes. Taking together, this information can develop consensus statements towards establishing best practice guidelines for integrative support staff working within professional, national and provincial sporting organizations.

Introduction: Unremitting advancements in wearable technology provides female consumers a plethora of fabricated garments that claim to monitoring biological function. Aim: This systematic review examined current literature pertaining to smart technology sport bras fabricated to assess cardiovascular function. Material and Methods: The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) was utilized, and the review was registered in the International prospective register of systemic reviews (PROSPERO) within the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). A total of 949 articles were screened after using key search terms using the Covidence systematic review software. Articles were sourced from PubMed, SPORTDiscus, or Medline via OVID databases. Results: A total of 19 articles were examined for eligibility and was reduced to a total of three articles to be included in the review. The results from this systematic review highlight the paucity of commercially available sport bras capable of accurately examining cardiovascular function during rest and exercise, while concomitantly providing the necessary support and comfort requirements for females. Of the commercially available sport bras, the Berlei sport bras was identified as the most accurate for recording cardiovascular stress during resting, walking, and running conditions. The three studies included in this review demonstrate strong potential for washable and flexible e-textile sensors with sufficient accuracy in pressure ranges that can be used in sport bras to monitor biological functioning. Conclusions: Future research should prioritize enhancing participant diversity in the examination of smart sport bras to ensure comprehensive inclusion of all body types.