Background: Running exercise is an effective means to enhance cardiorespiratory fitness and body composition. Besides these health benefits, running is also associated with musculoskeletal injuries that can be more prevalent in individuals with excessive body weight. Little is known regarding the specific effects of overweight and foot pronation on ground reaction force distribution during running. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the effects of overweight/obesity and foot pronation on running kinetics. Methods: Eighty-four young adults were allocated to four experimental groups: non-excessive body weight/non-pronated feet; non-excessive body weight/pronated feet; overweight or obesity/ non-pronated feet and overweight or obesity/pronated feet. Biomechanical testing included participants to run at ~ 3.2 m/s over an 18-m walkway with an embedded force plate at its midpoint. Three-dimensional ground reaction forces were recorded and normalized to body mass to evaluate running kinetics from 20 running trials. Test–re-test reliability for running speed data demonstrated ICC > 0.94 for each group and in total. Results: The results indicated significantly lower vertical impact peak forces (p = 0.001, effect size = 0.12), shorter time to reach the vertical impact peak (p = 0.006, effect size = 0.08) and reduced vertical loading rate (p = 0.0007, effect size = 0.13) in individuals with excessive body weight (overweight or obesity/non-pronated feet group and overweight or obesity/pronated feet) compared with individuals non-excessive body weight (non-excessive body weight/non-pronated feet and non-excessive body weight/pronated feet). Moreover, the excessive body weight groups presented lower peak braking (p = 0.01, effect size = 0.06) and propulsion forces (p = 0.003, effect size = 0.09), lower medio-lateral loading rate (p = 0.0009, effect size = 0.12), and greater free moments (p = 0.01, effect size = 0.07) when compared to the non-overweight groups. Moreover, a significant body mass by foot pronation interaction was found for peak medio-lateral loading rate. Non-excessive body weight/pronated feet, excessive body weight/non-pronated feet and excessive body weight/pronation groups presented lower medio-lateral loading rates compared to non-excessive body weight/non-pronated feet (p = 0.0001, effect size = 0.13). Conclusions: Our results suggest that excessive body weight has an impact on ground reaction forces during running. We particularly noted an increase in medio-lateral and torsional forces during the stance phase. Individuals with excessive body weight appear to adapt their running patterns in an effort to attenuate early vertical impact loading.

Psychological factors have been significantly confirmed in athletic performance, sports injury prevention, sports rehabilitation, and as an effective means of managing stress and anxiety in competitions. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of competitive anxiety on the injury level of student-athletes of Karadeniz Technical University.The method of this research is descriptive and correlational. The statistical population includes all athletes of Karadeniz Technical University, which are equal to 320 people. To determine the sample size, Cochran’s sample size estimation formula was used and the number of samples was 175, the gender random sampling method selected. First, to report sports injuries to describe the extent of injuries in the limbs (upper limbs, lower limbs, and trunk) and different parts of the body (joints, muscles, and bones), the report form of sports injuries was used and SCAT questionnaire was used to measure competitive anxiety. We analyzed data using SPSS software. We used regression because of the normality of the data in competitive anxiety tests and the occurrence of sports injuries.The research findings show that the average competitive anxiety of male athletes is 14.11 and the competitive anxiety of female athletes is 14.49. Competitive anxiety also has a significant positive effect on sports injury. The beta coefficient also shows that competitive anxiety predicts 0.33 changes in sports injury.Therefore, it can be said that as the level of competitive anxiety of athletic students increases, so does their level of injury, and to control sports injuries, mental skills should be increased and we should control the competitive anxiety of athletes.

Background: This study investigates the effects of a fatiguing exercise on lower limb electro-myographic activities and co-contraction in overweight females compared with normal weight females during running. Methods: Forty-eight females were divided into two groups. The first group included individuals with a normal body-mass-index. The second group comprised individuals classified as overweight/obese based on body-mass-index. Electromyography data from the tibialis anterior, gastrocnemius medialis, vastus lateralis, vastus medialis, rectus femoris, biceps femoris, and semitendinosus muscles were collected during running at constant speed using a surface electromyography system before and after a running induced fatigue. Findings: The results indicated significant main effects of the “Group” on tibialis anterior muscle activities during the loading phase (P = 0.040). Furthermore, the results showed significant main effects of “Fatigue” on rectus femoris (P = 0.028) and semitendinosus (P = 0.007) muscle activities during the loading phase. Paired-wise comparison demonstrated significantly greater rectus femoris and semitendinosus activities during the loading phase after the fatigue protocol. The results demonstrated significant main effects of “Fatigue” for general knee muscular co-contraction during early stance phase (P < 0.001). Paired-wise comparison demonstrated significantly greater general knee muscular co-contraction during early stance phase at post-test compared with pre-test. No significant main effect of “Group” and group-by-fatigue interactions were found for general and direct knee co-contraction during early stance phase (P > 0.05). Interpretation: Overall, our findings indicate that both fatigue and being overweight result in running pattern differences, but these occur through different mechanisms at a neuromuscular level. Neuromuscular responses to fatigue during running in overweight adults and in normal weight adults can be evaluated together, in order to optimize the modality of treatment and rehabilitation processes in overweight adults to reduce and/or prevent the risk of running related injury.

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate how genotype and caffeine habituation influence the acute effects of caffeine ingestion on exercise-induced hemostatic responses in individuals with obesity. Methods: Using a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover design, 40 physically inactive young men with obesity (age, 22.2 ± 2.3 yr; body mass index, 34.1 ± 2.7 kg·m ⁻² ) completed two moderate-to-high-intensity concurrent exercise sessions following ingestion of caffeine (3 mg·kg ⁻¹ ) or placebo. Blood samples were collected at baseline, after exercise, and after 60 min of recovery. Statistical analysis was performed by repeated-measures multivariate analysis of variance. Results: Acute exercise increased platelet count and aggregation, fibrinogen, F1 + 2, tPA antigen, D-dimer, and clot lysis time, regardless of genotype or caffeine habituation status ( P < 0.05). PAI-1 antigen remained unchanged after exercise ( P > 0.05) but decreased following recovery ( P < 0.01). Caffeine resulted in a greater increase in platelet aggregation, fibrinogen, F1 + 2, and clot lysis time, alongside a blunted increase in tPA antigen levels post-exercise in naïve consumers ( P < 0.05). In contrast, habitual caffeine consumers exhibited a mitigated increase in clot lysis time and a greater post-recovery reduction in PAI-1 antigen following caffeine ingestion ( P < 0.001). Caffeine’s impact on hemostatic responses to exercise was unaffected by genotype ( P > 0.05). Conclusions: Moderate-to-high-intensity concurrent exercise induces a transient prothrombotic state in physically inactive individuals with obesity. Acute caffeine supplementation at a moderate dose modulates the hemostatic responses depending on caffeine habituation status rather than CYP1A2 genotype: it exacerbates the prothrombotic response in naïve consumers but attenuates it in habitual consumers.