Triathlon: Predicting factors for cardiorespiratory fitness and performance, protocol for a systematic review
Creators: name: Telhado, Henrique
name: Azevedo, Vitor
name: Ascensao, Luis
name: Palmeira, António
name: Gomes, Lúcia
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Medicine and Health Sciences
subject: Life Sciences
subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: cardiorespiratory fitness
subject: performance
subject: sports
subject: triathlon

description: Systematic Review Protocol Administrative information Title (1): Triathlon: Predicting factors for cardiorespiratory fitness and performance, protocol for a systematic review. Registration (2): OSF and PROSPERO. Authors (3): Henrique Telhado (HT), Universidade Lusófona, htelhado@gmail.com António Palmeira (AP), (guarantor of the review), Universidade Lusófona antonio.palmeira@ulusofona.pt Luís Ascensão (LA), Universidade Lusófona, luispt1989@gmail.com Vitor Azevedo (VA), Universidade Lusófona, vitorhazevedo@hotmail.com Lúcia Gomes (LG), Universidade Lusófona, p2156@ulht.pt Corresponding author: Henrique Telhado, Rua das Vinhas de São Sebastião, lote B, 2705-347 Colares, Portugal All authors (excluding AP) will undertake independently a two-step selection, with studies screened via titles and abstracts followed by a full-text review, in groups of two authors; a minimum of five percent of the studies will be selected by the four authors. Data extraction will be undertake by HT, via standardized data extraction tables. All reviewers (excluding AP) will rate independently all included studies for risk of bias in groups of two; a minimum of five percent of the studies will be rated by the four reviewers. Amendment (4): This protocol is not an amendment. Support (5): No financial support or sponsor will be used in this review. The premises of CIDEFES (Centro de Investigação em Desporto, Educação Física E Saúde) will be used to develop this review. Introduction Rationale (6): Triathlon is a sport that includes three endurance disciplines swimming, cycling and running carried out continuously and sequentially, performed in different sets of distances and consists of one of the most demanding events in endurance sports. There are many factors that play an important role in triathlon performance: physiological, anthropometric, biomechanics, nutrition, environmental conditions (Olcina et al., 2018), psychological (Olmedilla et al., 2018), age, sex, experience (Knechtle et al., 2015), race strategy (Abbiss et al., 2006), training and deliberate practice (Macnamara et al., 2016), with some of these factors being more prevalent in different triathlon distances, and managing these factors to improve performance, maintaining athletes healthy mentally and physically requires a delicate balance. Objectives (7): From our previous research we have not been able to detect any systematic review of literature regarding the predicting factors for cardiorespiratory fitness and performance in triathlon including physiological factors, psychological factors, historic record, deliberate practice and race strategy. Therefore, it is objective of this review to analyse the published literature of the predicting factors for cardiorespiratory fitness and performance in triathlon. Methods Eligibility criteria (8): The primary question for this review is “What are the predicting factors for cardiorespiratory fitness and performance in triathlon?” and the respective components as follows: Population: Triathlon OR Ironman; Intervention/Exposure: Physiological OR Psychological OR Grit OR Motivation OR Vo2max OR Number of triathlons OR strategy OR Deliberate practice; Outcome: cardiorespiratory fitness OR performance. The following inclusion criteria were defined: triathlon (defined as swimming, cycling and running up to the distance of a full ironman) as a sport or if multisport, results per sport; written in Portuguese, English, Spanish or French, not limiting for published date; studies published in peer reviewed journals and studies based on cardiorespiratory fitness or performance, excluding the ones assessing injuries, genetics, nutrition, supplementation, altitude/pressure, temperature, gender, age, drafting, swimsuit or other equipment. The following exclusion criteria were defined: reviews, studies assessing off-road triathlon or para-triathlon, studies assessing exclusively physiological, neuromuscular and psychological changes during practice or races. Information sources (9): For the systematic search we have selected the following databases: SportDiscus, PubMed and PsycINFO. Search will be done till the 8th of March, 2022 without limitation for published date given that no previous systematic review was found. Search strategy (10): The research string was compounded as follows: (Triathl* OR Ironm*) AND (Physiological OR Psychological OR Grit OR Motivatio* OR VO2max OR "Number of triathl*" OR strateg* OR "Deliberate practice") AND (VO2max OR Performance) NOT (review OR injuries OR paratriathlon OR ultra-triathlon OR swimsuit OR genetics OR altitude), and will be applied to the three databases. Study records (11): For the studies identified by the research string, both titles and abstracts will be screened in one step, and in a second step the selected studies at full text, both operations will be done underlining the PICO words and applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria using CADIMA automation tool (Julius Kühn-Institut, Erwin-Baur-Str. 27, 06484 Quedlinburg, Germany), by groups of two reviewers independently. If selection will not fully match, new selection will be made till a consensus is achieved. The data extraction will be performed by the main author using supporting tables. Data items (12): The following variables will be collected from selected studies: title, authors, year, participants, type of study, region, instruments, procedures, measures, outcomes. Outcomes and prioritization (13): The main outcomes are the predicting factors for cardiorespiratory fitness and performance in triathlon and for the purpose of syntheses outcomes will be grouped in (i) physiologic and anthropometric, (ii) psychologic, (iii) training and practice, and (iv) race strategy and experience. Risk of bias in individual studies (14): the risk of bias assessment will be done at study level using NIH quality assessment tools (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Building 31, 31 Center Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892). Data synthesis (15): whenever studies’ outcomes are quantitatively presented using the same measures, they will be quantitatively synthetized using the same measures.