About this Research Topic

Background

High performance sport is continuing to push the barriers of elite athletes’ adaptation in an effort to gain an edge in highly competitive sporting environments, where the winning margins can be extremely thin. Methods for assessing, individualising and optimising the load-adaptation relationship to different physiological and biomechanical training interventions are highly sought after. However, despite the growing interest in training and ergogenic intervention research and available, reliable sports technologies, which make sophisticated analysis faster and more user-friendly (but not always more accurate), there remains much to be learnt about managing the load-adaptation pathway within elite athlete populations.

Several challenges and opportunities present themselves in identifying contemporary training strategies which can be implemented successfully in applied high performance settings. There is a need for data pertaining to elite athlete populations which offers time- and cost-efficient interventions to maximise the physiological and biomechanical load-adaptation pathways. Effective athlete management tools which properly assess the impact of these interventions are also required at the practitioner level to improve periodization, individualisation and translation to the field. However, there is also a great opportunity for research focusing on athlete availability/readiness through reduced injury/illness risk as an outcome of physiological and biomechanical loading interventions.

We therefore aim to publish a collection of articles (original research, pilot/preliminary or case studies, reviews, methods, conceptual analysis, data and brief research/technical reports, perspectives and opinions) that will advance knowledge and the practical implementation of physiological and biomechanical athlete load-adaptation pathways strategies. Suggested topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Individual mechanistic responses and adaptations to novel physiological and biomechanical training interventions,

• Development of time- and cost-efficient methods for achieving optimal training- or ergogenic aid-induced adaptations (e.g., HIIT protocols, nutritional supplementation, environmental exposure, specific tissue loading interventions or dose-response relationships) and for periodising different physiological and biomechanical interventions within a training program,

• Improved methods for accurately monitoring the outcomes of physiological and biomechanical training interventions (e.g., wearable technologies, computer vision, artificial intelligence, management of integrated support teams),

We particularly welcome collaborative scientific-practitioner research using elite performers of all genders and sport disciplines who are trained/tested under ecological situations in an effort to improve evidence-based recommendations.

Keywords: Load-adaptation pathways, training adaptation, ergogenic aids, elite athletes, biomechanical loading, physiological loading, training monitoring, high performance sport

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.

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