Female youth athletics has become more popular over the last few decades with volleyball specifically reaching some all-time highs with nearly ½ million girls currently involved in playing high school volleyball (Olson, 2024). However, females involved in this sport specifically, or other similar sports which involve higher volumes of jumping, cutting, reactive movements, and other aspects of explosive power can be more vulnerable to a variety of pain and injuries during thei

Downhill mountain bike racing requires total body strength, power, and endurance as races last up to five minutes often requiring intermittent bursts of peak wattage output to the pedals while navigating a course littered with obstacles battering the rider with high g-forces requiring immense upper body strength (Hurst et al., 2018). Grip strength endurance has been shown to be the second most influential element of the rider with riding skill being the most important (Chidle

Research Article: Lopes, L. R., Machado, D. E., Goes, R. A., Amaral, M. V. G., Dias, F., Tavares, V., Medeiros, R., & Perini, J. A. (2025). Implications of tendinopathy on the sports career: Epidemiological and clinical profile of high-performance athletes. Physical Therapy in Sport , 72 , 59–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ptsp.2025.02.003 Application With 10-50% of elite athletes having a chronic tendinopathy, what can be done to identify and manage risk factors? The nota

Research article citation: Wang, W., Wu, D., Wang, H., Zhang, Z., Jiang, X., Li, S., Shi, Y., & Gao, X. (2024). Acute Effects of Breath-Hold Conditions on Aerobic Fitness in Elite Rugby Players. Life (Basel, Switzerland) , 14 (8), 917-. https://doi.org/10.3390/life14080917 Let's get right to it. Straight to application on why having half a dozen breath holds during an easy aerobic warmup could supercharge your VO2max transiently for instant benefits in subsequent training

Endurance sports have a risk of the athletes developing intentionally or unintentionally LEA (low energy availability) which has higher prevalence in females, but should we be monitoring males, especially youth males for relative energy deficiency in sport (aka RED-S). An interesting study examined the special energy analysis of youth cyclists in season which occurs during hotter weather for possibility of LEA. By definition LEA is when daily consumption of <30kcal/ kg fat-fr

The narrative review by Wohlgemuth et al. (2021) explains most research for nutrition and sports performance is on males instead of females and it is females who have a variety of fluctuating nutrition and metabolic changes depending on their cycle. For example, eumenorrheic women metabolize fat and protein at a higher percentage in the luteal phase compared to the follicular stage. Basal metabolic rate (BMR) and training recovery rate/ capacities also vary across the cycle.

Best practices for management of post-rehab training of an ACL injury in females. First, we will focus on making sure the athlete is ready for return to sport (RTS) after the rehab. We need to make sure their body and mind can exceed the capacity and demands needed in their sport. Currently, a metanalysis found that only about 69% of female athletes can return to their previous sport and 79% of elite females return to their sport with literature lacking on reasons for the hig

Sample Athlete: 14-year-old eumenorrheic basketball player without symptoms of RED-S in the “specific preparatory” phase of the preseason. The sport of basketball demands a variety of fitness abilities from the athlete unlike many other sports. There is nearly equal aerobic and anerobic needs as repeated sprinting and shuffling occur without significant rest between these bouts. Therefore, a key need is the ability to perform repeated short, high-intensity efforts (5-10 s

Recommended 4 Week Resistance Training Intervention for College Female Basketball Players During Pre-Season. Rationale : Female basketball players require a diverse set of fitness abilities to both excel in the sport and prevent injury. Basic requirements to be a proficient player consist of aerobic endurance, jumping ability, agility, strength, balance, coordination, and higher lactate thresholds. Regarding injury risk, a major concern in basketball are lower b

One RCT study tested a theory of transient hypocalcemia occurring towards the middle-later portion of the luteal phase in certain women. Subjects who supplemented with 1,000mg calcium for these 7-10 days saw significant reduction in PMS symptoms (Arab et al., 2020). Since divergence from serum calcium homeostasis affects so many systems from cognitive and emotional to muscle contraction and relaxation, I also investigated specific recommendations from this week’s article Reco