Journal of sports sciences
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Editorial Historical Article
Sport and exercise science: just how new is new?
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We examined the influence of collective efficacy and subjective interpretations of success/failure on team causal attributions. The participants were 71 male and female high school athletes on 20 track relay teams. Before a selected competition, participants completed a collective efficacy questionnaire. ⋯ The individual perceptions of team success/failure significantly predicted the locus of causality and stability dimensions, whereas aggregated collective efficacy emerged as a significant team level predictor of average stability. Individual perceptions of collective efficacy were significantly related to team control and this relationship was moderated by the sex of the team. The findings indicate that collective efficacy beliefs held by athletes and teams prior to a competition influence the formation of post-competition team attributions in sport.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
The effect of biofeedback training on affective regulation and simulated car-racing performance: a multiple case study analysis.
The foundation of this study was based on an idiosyncratic concept, which uses probabilistic determinations (Kamata, Tenenbaum, & Hanin, 2002) to verify the utility and effectiveness of a biofeedback intervention by manipulating affective performance states in a race-car simulator. Nine males completed five separate time-trials of a simulated racing task and were then randomly assigned to one of three arousal regulation treatment conditions: (1) optimal, (2) poor, and (3) attention control. ⋯ The results also indicated that: (a) the biofeedback manipulation resulted in the expected changes for each participant, and (b) there were some large individual differences among the participants, necessitating the idiosyncratic approach. Limitations and future directions are also addressed.
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Comparative Study
How does practise of internal Chinese martial arts influence postural reaction control?
The aim of this study was to determine the effects of Chinese martial arts practice on postural reaction control after perturbation. Participants standing in Romberg tandem posture were subjected to an unexpected lateral platform translation with the eyes open or closed at two translation amplitudes. The peak displacement of the centre of pressure and of the centre of mass, and the onset latency of muscular activity (tibialis anterior, gastrocnemius, lumbodorsal muscular group, and rectus abdominis), were evaluated for martial arts practitioners and for sport and non-sport participants. ⋯ We conclude that martial arts practice influences postural reaction control during a fixed-support strategy in a tandem task. The martial arts group used the ankle joint more frequently than the sport and non-sport participants, especially in the eyes-closed conditions. Our results suggest that the better balance recovery in the martial arts group is a consequence of better control of biomechanical properties of the lower limbs (e.g. through muscular response by co-contraction), not a change in the neuromuscular temporal pattern.
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The aim of this study was to assess stroke rate variability in elite female swimmers (200-m events, all four techniques) by comparing the semi-finalists at the Athens 2004 Olympic Games (n = 64) and semi-finalists at the French National 2004 Championship (n = 64). Since swimming speed (V) is the product of stroke rate (SR) and stroke length (SL), these three variables and the coefficient of variation of stroke rate (CV(SR)) of the first and second 100 m were determined (V1, V2; SR1, SR2; SL1, SL2; CV(SR)1, CV(SR)2) and differences between the two parts of the events were calculated (DeltaV; DeltaSR; DeltaSL; DeltaCV(SR)). ⋯ Both CV(SR)1 and CV(SR)2 were lower for freestyle and backstroke races in the Olympic group than in the National group (P < 0.001). Our results suggest that stroke rate variability is dependent on an interaction between the biomechanical requisites of the task (techniques) and the standard of the swimmer.