(30) POST-TOURNAMENT RECOVERY PROFILES IN COLLEGIATE WOMEN’S TENNIS PLAYERS

Post-tournament recovery profiles have been reported in men’s but not women’s collegiate tennis players.

Purpose: To report cardiac-autonomic, neuromuscular, and perceptual recovery responses to a women’s collegiate tennis tournament.

Methods: A Division-1 women’s collegiate tennis team (n = 9) performed post-waking resting heart rate (RHR) and heart rate variability (HRV) tests with a cost-free mobile application for five consecutive pre-tournament mornings to establish baseline values. Neuromuscular performance was quantified via dominant-arm hand-grip dynamometry, vertical jumping on a force plate, and hexagon agility testing at least two days prior to the tournament, as were perceived recovery (PRS) and soreness (PSS) scales. All metrics were obtained following the same procedures at the same time of day 24 h and 48 h post-tournament.

Results: Values are presented in Table 1. No changes in RHR (P = 0.06), root-mean square of successive differences (P = 0.348), hand grip (P = 0.373), vertical jump (0.746), or PRS (P = 0.080) were observed. However, main effects of time were observed for hexagon agility (P = 0.001) and PSS (P = 0.001). Relative to baseline, hexagon agility times were significantly slower 24 h post-tournament. In addition, PSS indicated a significantly higher level of soreness at 48 h post-tournament relative to 24 h post-tournament.

Conclusions: Agility performance was impaired at 24 h post-tournament, and soreness peaked at 48 h post-tournament in women’s tennis players whereas all other metrics remained unaltered. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: Most variables recovered by 24-h post-tournament. Decrements in agility and peak soreness occurred on different days. These findings suggest that cardiac-autonomic, neuromuscular, and perceptual recovery markers each have their own time-course of recovery. Therefore, the status of one metric (e.g., soreness) should not be used to infer that of another (e.g., neuromuscular performance or cardiac-autonomic activity). Moreover, the status of one marker of lower-body neuromuscular performance (e.g., vertical jump height) does not reflect that of another (e.g., agility).


Acknowledgements: None