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Boxing is a sport with a clear objective: to hit and not get hit. Despite all the rules and regulations that have been conceived for safety purposes over time, boxing will always be a hurting business at the end of the day. The sweet science is unique from all other contact sports, like hockey and football, in that the damage inflicted on your opponent is deliberate [1].

Summary: Muscle damage as well as recurrent and serious infections especially to the end of the playing period in team sport or to the end of preparation for competition in endurance or single sport are the most common symptoms in elite sport demolishing optimal training results. Are VitaminD deficiency responsible for these symptoms in elite sport.

Competitive and elite sport often challenges the balance between health and performance, especially when it involves youth athletes. As Lausanne was getting ready to host the 2020 winter Youth Olympic Games, we had the opportunity to reflect on these challenges and on what they mean for sports medicine practitioners. Elite sport pushes athletes to the limit, be it through their own intrinsic drive to achieve ever more, or through the pressures of the multiple stakeholders around sport.

Life post Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) will not be same for anyone and like so many professions it will be a challenging time for physiotherapists and health care providers. A lot of practitioners are going through economic challenges because of the imposed lock down in various countries. As the situation recovers and more people resume their working life, we physiotherapists should be more concerned now while attending to our clients. As front-line practitioners, physiotherapists are more prone to have direct contact with patients affected with COVID-19.

Chronic exertional compartment syndrome of the lower leg accounts for approximately 75% of sports-related chronic leg pain. Nevertheless, the exact and timely recognition in athletes might pose a great challenge to sports physicians. Among a variety of possible differential diagnoses such as tenosynovitis, stress fractures, periostalgia, or popliteal artery entrapment syndrome the physician has to be able to identify the correct entity as promptly as possible.

Back pain is common among elite cyclists. Experiences of athletes and observations of coaches show that it may influence training quality and sometimes even limit performance during competition. Therefore the following study questions were investigated: 1) How many athletes of the Swiss cycling national teams suffer back pain during training or competition? 2) How good is athletes’ core strength? 3) What correlation exists between back pain and core strength? 4) Does an intensified core strength training reduce back pain?
A total of 111 elite cyclists, 45 athletes (38 m, 7f; 19.6 ± 3.5y) of technical disciplines (BMX, Trial, Downhill, 4X) and 66 athletes (39 m, 27f; 19.5 ± 5.8y) of endurance disciplines (road, MTB, Cyclo-cross) all members of Swiss cycling national teams, took part in in the study.

The goal of the present study was the analysis of the effects of two endurance training interventions (HIIT versus POL) over a period of 5 weeks on 16/17 year old sport major students. The study was integrated in regular P.E. lessons.
In addition to the training load, daily changes of easily measurable cardiologic parameters were monitored in order to assess their validity in predicting endurance performance.
The students conducted 12 training sessions in two groups. With pre- and post-tests the endurance capacity was determined via Luc Léger’s shuttle run test.

Acute kidney injury (AKI) resulting from ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI) is among the most common complications in hospitalized patients. In recent years, it has been argued that exercise is an approach to attenuate impairments caused by AKI.

This article described the clinical examination of the lower extremity during a pre-participation screening in regard of sports ability, presence of injuries and musculoskeletal disorders as well as predisposing risk factors for injuries and prevention. It divided into global static and dynamic testing but also isolated analysis of joint function.

Within a sports medicine setting vascular pathologies of the legs represent a rare entity and are often associated with a significant delay of diagnosis and treatment. Nevertheless, timely detection is crucial when it comes to management of athletes.

In den letzten eineinhalb Jahren wurde ich vielfach gefragt, ob die sportpsychologische Beratung von Sportlerinnen und Sportlern im Rahmen der Pandemie weiter in Anspruch genommen wurde und ob die Anliegen in dieser Zeit andere waren. Die Antwort lautet auf beide Fragen «ja».

The Youth Olympic Games were introduced in 2010 with the aim to bring young athletes not only an experience of competition on the world stage, but also to help them learn about the Olympic values, explore other cultures and develop the skills to become true ambassadors. The Lausanne 2020 Games provided an excellent opportunity to develop innovative concepts for health promotion and sports-related prevention. The enthusiasm across various sectors of society (political, academic and economy) empowered us to bring together multiple skills to materialize the IOC’s pledge.

This interview was conducted by Dr Boris Gojanovic after the Lausanne 2020 Youth Olympic Games.

Richard, can you please introduce yourself, as a medical doctor and an athlete.
I am the medical and scientific director for the IOC and I started off in life as a rower. As an athlete, I had the privilege to compete in the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, and I won a gold medal there.

Iron deficiency is frequent among athletes. All types of iron deficiency may affect physical performance and should be treated. The main mechanisms by which sport leads to iron deficiency are an increased iron demand, an elevated iron loss and a blockage of iron absorption due to hepcidin bursts. As a baseline set of blood tests, haemoglobin, haematocrit, mean cellular volume (MCV), mean cellular haemoglobin (MCH) and serum ferritin levels are the important parameters to monitor iron deficiency. In healthy male and female athletes >15 years, ferritin values <15µg/l are equivalent to empty, values from 15 to 30µg/l to low iron stores. Therefore a cut-off of 30µg/l is appropriate.

Gendered norms, stereotypes and biases implicitly influence our thoughts, attitudes and behaviours. These often lead to gender inequity, a phenomenon inherent in society and reflected in its various contexts. The increasing awareness of this inequity is leading to reflection and changes in society as a whole and its communities, organisations and institutions. In scientific disciplines, gender inequity has been, and still is, a point of discussion and consideration. In many cases, these discussions have led to positive and sustainable changes at both a structural as well as a policy level. This opinion piece discusses gender inequity in the context of sport science and, in particular, sport medicine in Switzerland.

Background: The development of Mountain Ultra Marathon (MUM) raises several questions to health professionals, regarding the short or long-term consequences on the health of participants.
Objective: to present the main acute and long-term effects of MUM on the main health issues usually studied among runners.
Methods: Pragmatic review of the literature, including grey literature from the medical staff of the races, notably the Ultra-trail du Mont Blanc.
Results:

While addictive disorders involving substances are well researched, the field of behavioral addictions, including exercise addiction, is in its infancy. Although exercise addiction is not yet recognized as a psychiatric disorder, evidence for the burden it imposes has gained attention in the last decade. Characterised by a rigid exercise schedule, the prioritization of exercise over one’s own health, family and professional life, and mental wellbeing, and extreme distress when exercise is halted, the phenomenon shares many feature with substance use disorders.

Physical inactivity constitutes the fourth leading cause of death globally. Health systems are being called to respond to the epidemic of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and help deliver on the promise of prevention approaches. Substantial evidence exists in support of multi-prong physical activity counseling, prescription and referral strategies, in particular those linking clinical and community-based resources, to help increase physical activity (PA) levels. In late 2007, the “Exercise is Medicine” (EIM) initiative was established by the American College of Sports Medicine to institutionalize PA promotion into the US healthcare system.

Objective: To determine differences between male and female subjects in the thigh muscles characteristics, separated into architectural (pennation, thickness, and/or fascicle length), mechanical (mass, strength, power, and/or stiffness), neuromuscular (activity) and fatigue aspects, in order to better understand the sex-related differences in the risk of muscle injuries.
Methods: A systematic literature search on Pubmed was performed with different keywords: skeletal muscle AND sex characteristics AND muscle contraction, with the following limits: humans and adults (19–44 years old).

Changes in public life, isolation, quarantine, and associated constraints within usual routine, as well as anxieties and concerns, are just some of many examples of psychiatric burdens caused by the COVID-19 pandemic (1). Not only the general population, but professional athletes in particular, are exposed to these challenges, as professional sports came to an abrupt halt upon occurrence of COVID-19.