Montenegrin Journal of Sports Science and Medicine

5 - 10

Authors: Michael Chia, Bokai Chen, Haresh Suppiah

Excessive sitting is detrimentally associated with major lifestyle diseases. Attempts at intervening the prolonged sitting time at work offer possibilities for a healthier lifestyle. The aim of the study was to evaluate the impact of using a seat-cycle (S-C) compared to the office-chair (O-C) in reducing prolonged sitting in the office. Twenty-one (mean age = 48±12.4 years) office workers (10 men and 11 women; mean BMI = 24.1±4.6 kg/m͘͘²) volunteered to participate in an 11-week crossover design study. Participants were randomly assigned into two groups- each started with different conditions: the office-chair (O-C) or the seat-cycle (S-C) intervention for 4 weeks with a 2-week ‘washout’ period in-between before switching over. Self-reported sleep quality, lower back pain, daytime sleepiness and several anthropometric measurements were obtained under the two conditions. Participants spent on average 5.79±1.51 hrs sitting in the office, and used the seat-cycle for an average of 22.8 minutes daily at work. Significant improvements (p<0.05) were noted in a pre-to-post setting for resting systolic blood pressure (124.9±12.57 mmHg vs 120.5±13.56 mmHg); sleepiness ratings between 1300–1400 hrs (1.91±0.71 vs 1.56±0.57); lower back pain score (0.95±1.02 vs 0.57±0.68) and sleep quality (4.81±2.16 vs 3.38±2.04) after the S-C intervention. The use of the S-C provides desk-bound workers a potential way to interrupt prolonged sitting at work and further research is recommended to support such interventions at the workplace.

17 - 28

Authors: Joško Sindik, Anđelko Botica, Matej Fiškuš

Sport psychologist needs to understand how psychological factors affect athletic performance of an individual, considering individual differences among athletes. Each specific problem in working with athletes must be considered depending on complex factors: the type (specificity) of sport; characteristics of the activity (the training or competition); stages of athletes’ sports development; gender and age differences, etc. Although there are numerous psychological instruments, which assess psychological characteristics of athletes, it is important to select instruments adjusted to athletes, working style of sports psychologist, available time and other constraints. Here, we have formulated a preliminary version of our own battery of questionnaires, named Multi¬di¬men¬sional Inventory of Sport Excellence (MUSI), selecting the items for following psychological characteristics: energizing, main¬tain¬ing attention, directing attention, wide internal / external attention and narrow internal / external attention. In this phase of the stu¬dy, participants were stratified only by gender. Sample of 248 participants was examined, of which 103 male athletes (age 24.52 ± 11.80 years) and 145 female athletes (age 16.61 ± 6.69 years), from the Croatian sports clubs, competing in 16 different sports (archery, football, handball, bocce, bowling, cycling, karate, rowing, tennis, volleyball, basketball, synchronized swimming, tri¬a¬t¬h¬lon, table tennis, chess, badminton). Data were collected from March to June 2014 in Rijeka, during the trainings in sports clubs. Results of Principal Component Analysis and the reliabilities type internal consistency showed that each of sub-question¬na¬ires from battery MUSI have satisfactory reliability and construct validity, giving positive guidance for future adaptation of the que¬stion¬naire to specific subpopulations of athletes.

35 - 36

Authors: Sergej M. Ostojic

Nucleotides are group of natural biomonomeric molecules and novel dietary supplements with performance-enhancing attributes. However, their mechanisms of action and target biological structures are poorly understood and identified. This short paper overviews the possible role of mitochondria during the utilization of nucleotides for exercise performance. Mitochondria-related effects of nucleotides have been identified, along with obstacles for dietary nucleotides delivery to the organelle.