posted on 2015-12-10, 14:14authored byElena Papacosta, George P. Nassis, Michael Gleeson
The purpose of this study was to investigate the responses of salivary hormones and salivary secretory immunoglobulin A (SIgA) and anxiety in winners and losers during an international judo competition. Twenty-three trained, male, national-level judo athletes provided three saliva samples during a competition day: morning, in anticipation of competition after an overnight fast, mid-competition, and post-competition within 15 min post-fight for determination of salivary cortisol, salivary testosterone, salivary testosterone/cortisol ratio, SIgA absolute concentrations, SIgA secretion rate and saliva flow rate. The competitive state anxiety inventory questionnaire was completed by the athletes (n = 12) after the first saliva collection for determination of somatic anxiety, cognitive anxiety and self-confidence. Winners were considered 1-3 ranking place (n = 12) and losers (n = 11) below third place in each weight category. Winners presented higher anticipatory salivary cortisol concentrations (p = 0.03) and a lower mid-competition salivary testosterone/cortisol ratio (p = 0.003) compared with losers with no differences for salivary testosterone. Winners tended to have higher SIgA secretion rates (p = 0.07) and higher saliva flow rates (p = 0.009) at mid-competition. Higher levels of cognitive anxiety (p = 0.02) were observed in the winners, without differences according to the outcome in somatic anxiety and self-confidence. The results suggest that winners experienced higher levels of physiological arousal and better psychological preparedness in the morning, and as the competition progressed, the winners were able to control their stress response better.
Funding
This study was financially supported by the A.G. Levendis Foundation(grant number 2012/13).
History
School
Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences
Published in
Journal of Sports Sciences
Pages
1 - 7
Citation
PAPACOSTA, E., NASSIS, G.P. and GLEESON, M.P., 2015. Salivary hormones and anxiety in winners and losers of an international judo competition. Journal of Sports Sciences, 34 (13), pp. 1281-1287.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Publication date
2015
Notes
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Sports Sciences on 19th November 2015, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/02640414.2015.1111521.