The goal of the current study was to investigate the relationship between sport expertise and perceptual and cognitive skills, as measured by the component skills approach. We hypothesized that athletes would outperform non-athlete controls in a number of perceptual and cognitive domains and that sport expertise would minimize gender differences. A total of 154 individuals (87 professional volleyball players and 67 non-athlete controls) participated in the study. Participants performed a cognitive battery, which included tests of executive control, memory, and visuo-spatial attention. Athletes showed superior performance speed on three tasks (two executive control tasks and one visuo-spatial attentional processing task). In a subset of tasks, gender effects were observed mainly in the control group, supporting the notion that athletic experience can reduce traditional gender effects. The expertise effects obtained substantiate the view that laboratory tests of cognition may indeed enlighten the sport-cognition relationship.

Context: Proprioception is essential to motor control and joint stability during daily and sport activities. Recent studies demonstrated that athletes have better joint position sense (JPS) when compared with controls matched for age, suggesting that physical training could have an effect on proprioception.Objective: To evaluate the result of an 8-week strengthtraining program on shoulder JPS and to verify whether using training intensities that are the same or divergent for the shoulder's dynamic-stabilizer muscles promote different effects on JPS.Design: Randomized controlled clinical trial. Setting: We evaluated JPS in a research laboratory and conducted training in a gymnasium.Patients or Other Participants: A total of 90 men, right handed and asymptomatic, with no history of any type of injury or shoulder instability.Intervention(s): For 8 weeks, the participants performed the strength-training program 3 sessions per week. We used 4 exercises (bench press, lat pull down, shoulder press, and seated row), with 2 sets each.Main Outcome Measure(s): We measured shoulder JPS acuity by calculating the absolute error.Results: We found an interaction between group and time. To examine the interaction, we conducted two 1-way analyses of variance comparing groups at each time. The groups did not differ at pretraining; however, a difference among groups was noted posttraining.Conclusions: Strength training using exercises at the same intensity produced an improvement in JPS compared with exercises of varying intensity, suggesting that the former resulted in improvements in the sensitivity of muscle spindles and, hence, better neuromuscular control in the shoulder.Key Words: joint position sense, neuromuscular control, muscle spindles Key PointsImprovements in joint position sense can be attained via standard strength-training exercises. Performing resistance exercises at consistent intensity rather than varying intensity resulted in better proprioception performance.

Background: Musculoskeletal injuries (MSK-I) are a serious problem in sports medicine. Modifiable and nonmodifiable factors are associated with susceptibility to these injuries. Thus, the aim of this study was to describe the prevalence of and identify the factors associated with MSK-I, including tendinopathy and joint and muscle injuries, in athletes. Methods: In this cross-sectional observational study, 627 athletes from rugby (n = 225), soccer (n = 172), combat sports (n = 86), handball (n = 82) and water polo (n = 62) were recruited at different sports training centres and competitions. Athlete profiles and the prevalence of MSK-I were assessed using a self-reported questionnaire. Only previous MSK-I with imaging confirmation and/or a positive physical exam by a specialized orthopaedist were considered. The association of the epidemiological, clinical and sports profiles of athletes with MSK-I was evaluated by a logistic regression model. Results: The mean age was 25 ± 6 years, and 60% of the athletes were male. The epidemiological, clinical and sports profiles of the athletes were different for the five sport groups. The MSK-I prevalence among all athletes was 76%, with 55% of MSK-I occurring in a joint, 48% occurring in a muscle and 30% being tendinopathy, and 19% of athletes had three investigated injuries. The MSK-I prevalence and injury locations were significantly different among sport groups. There was a predominance of joint injury in combat sports athletes (77%), muscle injury in handball athletes (67%) and tendinopathy in water polo athletes (52%). Age (≥30 years) was positively associated with joint (OR = 5.2 and 95% CI = 2.6-10.7) and muscle (OR = 4.9 and 95% CI = 2.4-10.1) injuries and tendinopathy (OR = 4.1 and 95% CI = 1.9-9.3). Conclusion: There is a high prevalence of tendinopathy and joint and muscle injuries among rugby, soccer, combat sports, handball and water polo athletes. The analysis of associated factors (epidemiological, clinical and sports profiles) and the presence of MSK-I in athletes suggests an approximately 4-5-fold increased risk for athletes ≥30 years of age. The identification of modifiable and non-modifiable factors can contribute to implementing surveillance programmes for MSK-I prevention.

No abstract