Descrição e relevância percebida das práticas de treinamento de atletas brasileiros de Wushu Sanda: Comparações por sexo e nível competitivo

Abstract

Sanda is a combat sport arising from Wushu, the Chinese martial arts, in which both striking and grappling motor actions are allowed. Besides its popularity grew due to the efforts to bring Wushu to the Olympics, scientific literature about its training aspects, physiological and neuromuscular demands, biomechanical, timing, and motor patterns are scarce. This study aimed to describe Brazilian Wushu Sanda athletes’ training routine, involving specific training, complementary training (physical preparation), habits, and daily routine, besides their perceptions on relevance, the effort made, the concentration needed, and pleasure obtained during the six months leading up to the main competition they participated in their competition career compering them by sex and competitive level. Athletes from different competitive levels and regions of Brazil were recruited through an online call on social media and invited to answer a questionnaire their competitive level, specific and complementary training routine, and daily routine and habits. Ninety-seven athletes participated in this study. For the statistical analysis, in the scale variables, the ANOVA two-way test was used, and for categorical variables, the chi-square for linear trend and chi-square tests were used for sex (male or female) and competitive level (state, national or international) comparisons The analysis was performed using the statistical package SPSS version 20.0, and the significance level was settled as p≤ 0.05. It was concluded that higherlevel athletes started trAining earlier and female athletes achieved their career pick earlier. The training volume was high and with no differences for groups, although female athletes trained more times by week. For specific training, higher-level athletes relied more on closed methods while lower-level athletes focused on open methods. There were differences in perception of the specific training methods for sex and competitive level. There was a high prevalence of aerobic, strength, anaerobic, multimodal, and flexibility methods for complementary conditioning training, and its utilization and perceptions were influenced by sex and competitive level. Complementary training of other Wushu and combat sports modalities were less utilized. It was observed a high prevalence of rapid weight loss, being higher among female and higher-level athletes. Broadly, athletes did not receive any financial return from sport and needed to work parallelly with their training routine.