Especialização esportiva, volume de treinamento e desfechos psicológicos em jovens atletas

Abstract

This master's thesis comprises two studies, one original and one systematic review, about sports specialization and psychological outcomes in young gymnasts. Article 1 is an original study that aimed to investigate the association between technical level, training volume, and psychological symptoms in young gymnasts. The sample consisted of girls, aged 10 to 12 years, who participated in the championships of the Brazilian Gymnastics Confederation in 2022. The participants answered an online questionnaire via the Google Forms platform with the help of a responsible person. The variables were analyzed using SPSS 20.0 software. The Mann-Whitney test was used to compare data between technical levels and Spearman's correlation to verify the association between training volume and outcomes of interest. A logistic regression was performed to assess the association between exceeding or not the volume recommendations for the age group. Sixty-three girls answered the questionnaires. They were, on average, 11.17 ± 0.69 years old and trained 17.07 ± 7.50 hours a week. A low but significant correlation was identified between age of entry into the modality (rho= 0.285; p=0.037) and age at first competition (rho= 0.307; p= 0.024) with training volume. Depressive (rho= 0.090; p= 0.517), stress (rho= 0.059; p= 0.672), and anxiety (rho= 0.120; p= 0.389) symptoms did not present a significant correlation with training volume. Also, being a specialist increases the chance of the athlete exceeding the training volume by four times (OR= 4.07; 95%CI 1.00; 16.61). On the other hand, for each year that increases the age at which training and competition begin, the chance of exceeding the recommended volume decreases by 1.4 times (OR= 0.70; 95%CI 0.50; 0.98; OR= 0.71; 95%CI 0.53; 0.94). Despite the widely theorized association between training volume and psychological outcomes in young athletes, the present study found no association between the variables in question. Article 2 was a systematic review that aimed to synthesize the main findings of original studies on sports specialization and psychological outcomes in young athletes in different sports. A search was performed in PubMed, Embase, Sport Discus, CINAHL, PsycInfo, and Lilacs databases. Two researchers conducted the selection, data extraction, and quality analysis. The results were qualitatively synthesized. Thirteen studies were included in the review, which analyzed sports specialization and different psychological outcomes, such as quality of life, sleep quality, anxiety symptoms, depression, Burnout, perception of well-being, and motivation. Of these, eight showed no significant difference between the specialization groups and the main psychological outcome of interest. Although experts in the field and medical organizations are against sports specialization, the results of the original study shows that gymnasts who compete at national level in Brazil are, for the most part, specialists, and exceed their age by hours of training. Still, our results suggest that training volume is not associated with the psychological symptoms in question. Considering volume recommendations for the age group, being a specialist increases an athlete's chance of exceeding training volume. Even so, the review showed that there is no difference between sports specialization groups for the vast majority of symptoms. Therefore, EE does not seem to be associated with a worse quality of life, symptoms of stress, anxiety, depression and Burnout. The association with sleep quality was inconclusive. Still, highly specialized athletes have greater daytime distress than those at lower levels of specialization.