Cognitive function, mood, and stress are negatively affected during peak training in collegiate rowers, which may have implications for injury risk and performance.
May warrant monitoring mood and stress during peak training in rowers; hypothesis-generating for injury and performance risks.
Student-athletes face the challenge of academic and athletic demands across their competitive season. Research has demonstrated that athletes have positive mental health at pre and post-season while negative moods increase during peak training. However, a more complete picture of the psychobiological adaptation occurring across a competitive season is lacking. Specifically, little is known concerning how cognitive function is impacted. PURPOSE: To characterize cognitive function and its relationship to behavioral and biological outcomes across a season in Division I collegiate rowers. METHODS: Male (N = 21) and female (N = 22) rowers were enrolled before the start of their season in January, 2014. Cognitive, mood, stress and biological outcomes were collected at baseline, early season, peak training and post-season. Measurements included the Perceived Deficits (cognitive) Questionnaire (PDQ), Total Mood Disturbance (TMD) using the Profile of Mood States, the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), salivary cortisol and performance on the Stroop color-naming task (reaction time and response accuracy for 264 congruent and incongruent trials). Data were analyzed using repeated measures ANOVAs. Pairwise comparisons were used to determine differences between time points (Bonferroni correction, p<0.05). Pearson correlations were used to examine relationships at peak training (p<0.05). RESULTS: No significant differences (p>0.05) were observed between genders, thus their data were combined. A significant main effect of time (df = 3,105, p<0.01) was observed for the PDQ (F = 13.4), TMD (F = 18.7), PSS (F = 19.8), ESS (F = 5.2) and cortisol (F = 11.7). Pairwise comparisons revealed that values during peak training differed significantly from baseline and post-season for all outcomes (p<0.05). The PSS was positively correlated with TMD (r = 0.79), PDQ (r = 0.55) and negatively correlated to response accuracy during incongruent trials (r = -0.34) while TMD was positively correlated with PDQ (r = 0.54). CONCLUSION: The novel observation of the study is that cognitive function is negatively affected during peak training. This has implications for baseline concussion testing, injury risk and academic and athletic performance. Funded by the Virginia Horne Henry Foundation PRJ 77AG.
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Shields et al. (2015) studied this question.
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