Journal
JOURNAL OF FUNCTIONAL MORPHOLOGY AND KINESIOLOGY
Volume 8, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/jfmk8010001
Keywords
COVID-19 pandemic; survey; return to play; symptoms; health-related quality of life
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The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on sports and athletes, affecting their performance and psychological well-being. Female athletes are more likely to experience post-COVID-19 symptoms and exhibit greater levels of fatigue. Specific training programs and continuous medical checks and monitoring are necessary for athletes at different levels.
The COVID-19 pandemic deeply affected sports and athletes, influencing performance and psychological wellbeing. In order to provide useful guidelines for coaches, a web-based survey was conducted. Three web-based questionnaires were administered during the last phase of the Omicron wave to a total of 204 Italian athletes (age 24.96 +/- 9.82): an informative questionnaire to collect sociodemographic data and infection symptoms information, the Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS) and the General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12). No differences between infection sequels of different variant typologies were found over the long term after the infection. The most frequently declared symptoms included cough (50%), muscular skeletal impairments (48%) fatigue (43%) and fever (43%). Results showed that female athletes have a higher risk of developing post-COVID-19 symptoms, GHQ-12 worse results (p = 0.005) and greater fatigue (p = 0.0002) than males. No significant difference in infection incidence between high- and low-level athletes was found. Endurance athletes showed greater perceived fatigue than anaerobic sports athletes (p = 0.045). Conclusions: These results suggested the need for specific approaches and continuous updating to differentiate training programs for different athletes during the return to play. Medical controls and daily monitoring of athletes of all levels after the infection could be advisable.
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