About this Research Topic
Endurance performance is an ever-exciting area in sport and exercise science. The recent sub 2h attempt on the marathon has brought new developments and reignited the debate on strategies for optimising endurance performance, both in the scientific community and the field. Despite the abundance of research on endurance performance, there is still a mismatch between endurance performance per se and the physiological adaptations required to reach such performance. Unfortunately, most of the time, research papers report performances and athletes’ profiles on one hand, or physiological adaptation in response to a given nutritional or training intervention in another hand, but the link between adaptation and performance is rarely made. Such conditions prevent us from drawing clear practical recommendations for optimising endurance performance. As such, we believe it is time to clearly identify the physiological/molecular adaptations that translate into the production of sports performance.
In this Research Topic, we would like to ask scientists to provide original data, offer commentary, and critically examine how past and future research studies could further our understanding of the physiological adaptations that can translate into enhanced endurance exercise performance. We believe this initiative could reinforce the impact of sport science and exercise physiology research to the scientific community while better informing the field of sports performance. Manuscripts can be focused on the link between a particular physiological adaptation (e.g., VO2max,) and endurance performance (e.g. marathon time) or include multiple variables (e.g., running economy, mitochondrial content). Manuscripts can also concern only one (e.g. marathon running) or multiple sports disciplines (e.g. triathlon), provided it is of endurance nature (minimum duration of 4min with no maximal limit). All papers must include at least one measure of endurance performance (e.g., power output, time, distance covered), and authors are invited to discuss the meaningfulness of this measure in the context of the sport. We welcome researchers to submit manuscripts in the form of original research, narrative reviews, systematic reviews with or without meta-analysis, commentaries, and perspectives on the endurance performance topics listed below:
• Locomotion efficiency and endurance performance
• Training strategies/periodization to enhance endurance performance
• Nutritional strategies/periodization to enhance endurance performance
• Mitochondrial adaptation and endurance performance
• Altitude training and endurance performance
• Heat training and endurance performance
• Energy/Glycogen availability and endurance performance
• Physiological/molecular adaptation and endurance performance
In this Research Topic, we would like to ask scientists to provide original data, offer commentary, and critically examine how past and future research studies could further our understanding of the physiological adaptations that can translate into enhanced endurance exercise performance. We believe this initiative could reinforce the impact of sport science and exercise physiology research to the scientific community while better informing the field of sports performance. Manuscripts can be focused on the link between a particular physiological adaptation (e.g., VO2max,) and endurance performance (e.g. marathon time) or include multiple variables (e.g., running economy, mitochondrial content). Manuscripts can also concern only one (e.g. marathon running) or multiple sports disciplines (e.g. triathlon), provided it is of endurance nature (minimum duration of 4min with no maximal limit). All papers must include at least one measure of endurance performance (e.g., power output, time, distance covered), and authors are invited to discuss the meaningfulness of this measure in the context of the sport. We welcome researchers to submit manuscripts in the form of original research, narrative reviews, systematic reviews with or without meta-analysis, commentaries, and perspectives on the endurance performance topics listed below:
• Locomotion efficiency and endurance performance
• Training strategies/periodization to enhance endurance performance
• Nutritional strategies/periodization to enhance endurance performance
• Mitochondrial adaptation and endurance performance
• Altitude training and endurance performance
• Heat training and endurance performance
• Energy/Glycogen availability and endurance performance
• Physiological/molecular adaptation and endurance performance
Keywords: Exercise physiology, cycling, running, performance testing, sport performance, endurance
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
