Jean-Francois Toussaint

Paris Descartes University · School of Medicine

Objectives: Currently, there are no guidelines for implementing the monitoring of menstrual status, including the natural menstrual cycle (NC) or oral contraception (OC), in a sport setting. We aimed to provide a feasible, on-field methodological approach for monitoring NC and OC in female athletes. Methods: We developed a smartphone app with da...

Background: Recently a proof-of-concept was proposed to derive the soccer players’ individual in-situ acceleration-speed (AS) profile from global positioning system (GPS) data collected over several sessions. The present study aimed to validate an automatized method of individual GPS-derived in-situ AS profiling in professional rugby union setting...

Background: This study aimed to identify a Relative Age Effect (RAE) among French young swimmers and apply corrective adjustment procedures to rebalance performances according to categories and events. Methods: 5,339,351 performances of French swimmers aged 10 to 18 were collected between 2000 and 2019. Birth quarters distribution was examined a...

Introduction: The Mixed-Team-Relay (MTR) triathlon is an original race format present on the international scene since 2009, which became an Olympic event at the Tokyo 2020 Games. The aim of this study was to define the probabilities of reaching a victory, a podium, or a finalist rank in a relay triathlon, according to the position of any of the f...

Objectives To examine the relationships between medical withdrawals, playing standards, court surfaces and genders in tennis players participating in all elite tours. Design Descriptive epidemiology study. Methods Data were collected from Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), Women Tennis Association (WTA), Challengers and International Tennis...

COVID-19 vaccination raised concerns about its potential effects on physical performance. To assess the impact of COVID-19 vaccination on the perceived change in physical performance, we conducted an online survey among elite athletes from Belgium, Canada, France and Luxembourg, with questions about socio-demographics, COVID-19 vaccination, perceiv...

Background: Only few studies analyzed real training programs of sprinters while that should be a valuable step in the understanding of sprint training. The present study aimed at characterizing track cycling sprinter training by training load and intensity distribution. Methods: Twenty-nine weeks of prechampionship training data were retrospecti...

There is strong evidence that physical activity has various benefits on health in primary, secondary and tertiary prevention. However, studies on the socio-economic impacts of Health-Enhancing Physical Activity (HEPA) still remains scant, particularly in the French context. The aim of this report was to explore the grey and scientific literature to...

Objectives: To investigate the effect of menstrual cycle (MC) and hormonal contraception (HC) phases in elite rowers training, performance and wellness monitoring. Methods: Twelve French elite rowers were follow-up for 4,2 cycles on average in their final preparation for the Olympics and Paralympics Games in Tokyo 2021 through an on-site longitudin...

Introduction: Relative Age Effect (RAE) consists of a biased distribution of the dates of birth in a same-age group. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate Relative Age Effect among French athletes in different track-and-field events, and propose a corrective adjustment method to highlight the true potential of an athlete with respect to his/h...

In elite athletes, training individualization is widely recommended to optimize competitive performance. Previous studies have evidenced the impact of hormonal fluctuations on different performance parameters among female athletes, but the parameters themselves, the magnitude and the direction of the effects are inconclusive. While consideration of...

The current literature is mostly male-based, limiting evidence-based recommendations for training individualization for female athletes. Recently, studies have relied on recent findings showing a potential effect of the menstrual cycle to exclude female athletes from their samples. We highlight that the arguments usually put forward to this action...

Background: Regular and moderate physical activity is beneficial for physical and mental health, resulting in an increase in life expectancy for both sexes. From a cardiovascular point of view, although the benefits of regular moderate physical exercise have been established, the long-term effects of repeated ultra-endurance running events are stil...

The impact of maternity (Mat) on subsequent athletic performance is not well known. This study aims to investigate the impact of maternity among elite marathoners on their overall performance progression. For each runner listed in the top 150 female marathoners, who had experienced a mid-career maternity, performance development was reconstituted t...

Introduction: Breast cancer (BC) has particular characteristics in young women, with diagnosis at more advanced stages, a poorer prognosis and highly aggressive tumors. In NeoFit, we will use an activity tracker to identify and describe various digital profiles (heart rate, physical activity, and sleep patterns) in women below the age of 45 years o...

Purpose: To measure the proportion of French swimmers that progressed, stagnated, or regressed during the 2020 national championship compared with previous ones. Method: Individual best performances were collected at the French national championships from 2000 to 2020. Yearly proportions of swimmers who improved, stagnated, or regressed in perfo...

Background Breast cancer (BC) has particular characteristics in young women, with diagnosis at more advanced stages, a poorer prognosis and highly aggressive tumors. In NeoFit, we will use an activity tracker to identify and describe various digital profiles (heart rate, physical activity, and sleep patterns) in women below the age of 45 years on n...

Based on comparisons to moderate continuous exercise (MICT), high-intensity interval training (HIIT) is becoming a worldwide trend in physical exercise. This raises methodological questions related to equalization of exercise dose when comparing protocols. The present scoping review aims to identify in the literature the evidence for protocol equal...

This study aims to identify the potential bias of the relative age effect (RAE) in French alpine skiers and to propose a mathematical correction adjustment for such a bias. All performances and birthdates of skiers on the national and international circuit were collected from the 2004 up to 2019. A goodness-of-fit chi-square test and the residuals...

Background: The COVID 19 pandemic has greatly disrupted high performance sport and international competition. The aim of this study was to quantify the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the world's top 10 performances in Athletics and Swimming among nondisabled and Paralympic athletes. Methods: The results of the 10-best world performers in 66...

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of congenital and acquired visual impairments on the international performance of Para swimmers and Para track and field athletes. We collected results from visually impaired Para athletes competing in Para swimming or Para athletic events at all IPC-labelled competitions between 2009 and 2019. Th...

Objective: To measure the impact of restrictions due to COVID on the proportion of matches won at home, away and draw in professional soccer and rugby union. Materials and Methods: Two samples of professional soccer and rugby union matches were collected from 2012–13 to 2020–21 seasons. For soccer, data involved first and second division matches of...

Purpose: This study aimed to identify the risk of neurodegenerative death (ND) that former Olympians endure due to their participation in sports grouped based on presumed repeated shocks to the head, and to understand the impact of their participation in such elite sports on their total longevity. Materials and Methods: The cohort included all form...

The main aim of this study was to evaluate the validity and the reliability of a swimming sensor to assess swimming performance and spatial-temporal variables. Six international male open-water swimmers completed a protocol which consisted of two training sets: a 6Â100m individual medley and a continuous 800 m set in freestyle. Swimmers were equipp...

Background : In elite athletes, training individualization is widely recommended to optimize competitive performance. Previous studies have evidenced the impact of hormonal fluctuations on different performance parameters among female athletes. While consideration of menstrual cycle (MC) phases as a parameter in training individualization strategie...

Objectives The aim of the study is to compare how member states of the European Union (EU) develop their national physical activity (PA) recommendations and to provide an overview of the methodologies they apply in doing so. Information was collected directly from the physical activity focal points of EU member states in 2018. Five countries were c...

The purpose was to observe the effects of a four-week lockdown on the resting heart rate (RHR) and well-being perception of elite swimmers. Twenty elite swimmers performed RHR measurements upon waking in supine and standing positions. Baseline values and those measured after four weeks of lockdown were compared. Swimmers completed a questionnaire o...

Background: While academic achievement has been associated with physical activity, the present work questions the potential association between the physical fitness level of adolescents and the type of school they attend, ranging from academic to technical schools. Methods: 20,228 young French students from 76 schools (9,196 females), mean age 1...

Low levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin have been associated with the onset of depression. While traditional treatments include antidepressants, physical exercise has emerged as an alternative for patients with depressive disorders. Yet there remains the fundamental question of how exercise is sensed by the brain. The existence of a muscle–bra...

International elite Para swimmers form a large portion of the overall multi-medalist winning population. For the highest performing Para swimmers, world class performances were achieved across different strokes. The aim of this study was to quantify the level of involvement across different events and to examine this in relation to the level of per...

The objective was to compare the metabolic responses of high-level national swimmers to threshold or polarised training. 22 swimmers (n = 12 males and 10 females) participated in a 28-week cross-over intervention study consisting of 2 × 6 period weeks of training. Swimmers were assigned randomly to either training group for the first period: polari...

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to determine and weigh the anthropometric indicators that were associated with pacing performances for each Olympic rowing category. Methods: Between 2010 and 2015, 1,148 rowers (650 men and 498 women) participated in the finals of World Championships in each heavyweight Olympic event. They were categorized...

Context: The human development territories have been severely constrained under the Covid-19 pandemic. A common dynamics has been observed, but its propagation has not been homogeneous over each continent. We aimed at characterizing the non-viral parameters that were most associated with death rate. Methods: We tested major indices from five domain...

Objective To determine the risk of death due to prominent mental disorders, substance abuse, and self-harm among US Olympians compared with the general population. Methods All female (n=2301) and male (n=5823) US Olympians who participated in the summer or winter Games between 1912 and 2012 were followed until 2016. The National Death Index certif...

Objective To examine the relationships between the occurrence and severity of injuries using three workload ratios (ACWR, EWMA, REDI) in elite female soccer players and international male and female pentathletes.Materials and Methods Female soccer players in the U16 to U18 national French teams (n = 24) and international athletes (n = 12, 4 women a...

The purpose of this study was to quantify training loads (TL) of high intensity sessions through original methods (TRIMP; session-RPE; Work-Endurance-Recovery) and their updated alternatives (TRIMPcumulative; RPEalone; New-WER). Ten endurance athletes were requested to perform five sessions until exhaustion. Session 1 composed by a 800m maximal per...

Objective To quantify US female and male Olympic athletes’ longevity and the years of life lost or saved due to multiple causes of death as compared with the US general population. Methods Former US athletes who had participated in the summer or winter Olympic Games at least once between 1912 and 2012 were included. Olympians’ date of birth, death...

Background: The French National Observatory for Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviors conducted a national survey aiming to evaluate the potential effects of confinement on the population's physical activity levels and sedentary behaviors. Methods: In close collaboration with the French Ministry of Sports and a selected expert committee, 3 d...

The age-performance relationship describes changes in the organism’s structural and functional capabilities over the course of the lifespan. The typical, empirical pattern is an asymmetrical inverted-U shape association with peak capacity occurring early in life. This process is well described in the literature, with an increasing interest in featu...

Objectives: The aim of this study was to quantify collective experience based on cumulative shared selections of players and to assess its impact on team performance in international rugby union. We assume that the greater the experience, the better the group will perform. Methods: Scoresheets of all games involving at least one of all 10 nations p...

Objectives The purpose of this study was to quantify the impact of morphological characteristics on freestyle swimming performance by event and gender. Design Height, mass, body mass index (BMI) and speed data were collected for the top 100 international male and female swimmers from 50 to 1500 m freestyle events for the 2000–2014 seasons. Method...

---- A dedicated R package is now available: https://grenouil.github.io/REDI/ ---- ---- A code-free web app is also provided to compute REDI directly on your datasets: https://arthurleroy.shinyapps.io/REDI/ -------------------------------- Objective The purpose of this study was to define a new index the Robust Exponential Decreasing Index (REDI...

This case study reports the training of an elite 25-km open-water swimmer and the daily heart rate variability (HRV) changes during the 19-week period leading to his world champion title. Training load was collected every day and resting HRV was recorded every morning. The swimmer’s characteristics were V̇O2max: 58.5 ml·min−1·kg−1, maximal heart ra...

Background This study investigated the periodization of elite swimmers’ training over the 25 weeks preceding the major competition of the season.Methods We conducted a retrospective observational study of elite male (n = 60) and female (n = 67) swimmers (46 sprint, 81 middle-distance) over 20 competitive seasons (1992–2012). The following variables...

Coefficients values, fitting indicators and age at the peak performance for all track and field events.

During the last decades, all para-athletes with disabilities have significantly increased their performance level due to technological progress and human investment, through better training or recovery protocols, medical care and nutritional monitoring. Among these elements, the athlete’s age is one of the determining factors in performance. The ai...

Physical and cognitive performances change across lifespan. Studying cohorts of individuals in specific age ranges and athletic abilities remains essential in assessing the underlying physiological mechanisms that result in such a drop in performance. This decline is now viewed as a unique phenotypic biomarker and a hallmark of the aging process. T...

Maximal physical performances are powerful and accurate biomarkers in the understanding of age-related changes during the aging process. Previous studies have characterized age-related changes from Caenorhabditis elegans to Homo sapiens. We characterized changes in this pattern for H. sapiens, decade by decade, from 1970 to 2017. Using 286,916 perf...

Introduction: Elite performance in sports is known to be influenced by heritable components, but the magnitude of such an influence has never been quantified. Hypothesis/Objectives: We hypothesized that having a former world-class champion in the family increases the chances of an athlete to repeat the achievement of her or his kinship. We aimed to...

Background An inverse relationship exists between physical activity and many non-communicable diseases, such as obesity. Given the daily time spent, a logical domain to reach an adult population for intervention is within and around the workplace. Many government bodies, including the World Health Organization (WHO), include worksite health promoti...

Purpose: To quantify the impact of a polarized distribution of training intensity on performance and fatigue in elite swimmers. Methods: Twenty-two elite junior swimmers (12 males: age 17 ± 3 yrs, and 10 females: age 17 ± 3 yrs) participated in a cross-over intervention study over 28 weeks involving 2 x 6-week training periods separated by 6 wee...

Objectives: The present study analyzes the effects of volume increase on physical performances in soccer-specific exercises performed at high intensity. Methods: 12 young professional players performed three types of soccer-specific exercise: one small-sided game (SSG) and two soccer-specific training (SST: repeated sprints and aerobic runs). Each...

To quantify the years of life saved from cardiovascular (CVD), cancer and overall deaths among elite athletes according to their main type of physiological effort performed in the Olympic Games. All French athletes participating in the Games from 1912 to 2012, with vital status validated and cause of death (if concerned) identified by the national...

Context: In order to help states to develop policies and strategies impacting on all determinants of physical activity, the WHO has set up a policy analysis tool, the HEPA PAT (Health-Enhancing Physical Activity Policy Analysis Tool). This tool allows evaluation of national policies, while considering the complex network of determinants and influe...

Purpose: An increasing amount of people are turning to new challenges such as the completion of an ultra-marathon and choose to continue to train intensively despite advanced age. As a result, numerous epidemiological data are available and constitute an experimental model for the research community that studies the effects of aging on physiologica...

The clinical and biological follow-up of individuals, such as the biological passport for athletes, is typically based on the individual and longitudinal monitoring of hematological or urine markers. These follow-ups aim to identify abnormal behavior by comparing the individual's biological samples to an established baseline. These comparisons may...

Echoing scientific and industrial progress, the Twentieth century was an unprecedented period of improvement for human capabilities and performances, with a significant increase in lifespan, adult height, and maximal physiological performance. Analyses of historical data show a major slow down occurring in the most recent years. This triggered larg...

Résumé Objectifs Souligner la nécessité et l’intérêt de la mise en place de modèles de quantification de charge dans le sport de haut niveau. Actualités Parfois délaissé, y compris dans le sport de haut niveau, notamment par son aspect chronophage, la quantification de la charge d’entraînement revêt pourtant de grands intérêts. Il est essentiel d...