The Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport is a truly multidisciplinary journal, publishing papers that cover the very broad spectrum of sports medicine and sport science. For example, in this issue we cover topics as diverse as exercise training and chronic heart failure, sport injury case capture, image guided injections for Achilles tendinopathy, sport participation in young people, and the use of global positioning systems for analysis of team sports. In adopting the broad approach that this journal does, it allows us to highlight multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research, whilst at the same time allowing for single discipline and more narrowly defined research.
We are acutely aware that sports medicine and sport science is often interprofessional in nature, and as such, many education and training programs in these areas are adopting a stronger interdisciplinary focus. We find allied health students studying alongside medical students, and we find many sport and exercise science programs incorporating content in common with some allied health programs. At higher and more specific levels of learning, it is even more commonplace to find sports medicine and science practitioners from a range of disciplines learning and problem solving together. Encouraging trainees to work in concert with those from other disciplines is important at an early stage if we are to achieve meaning in an interprofessional working relationship later in their careers.
Whilst this all appears ideal in terms of the management of athletes, it does raise the potential difficulty of “ownership” of practice domains. By way of example I will highlight the lead paper in this issue, a position statement on exercise training and chronic heart failure. Although this paper has been developed as a position statement of the professional organisation, Exercise and Sport Science Australia (ESSA), it clearly demonstrates that those from many sports medicine and sport science disciplines need to be involved in managing chronic heart failure with exercise training, and in fact, no single discipline owns this domain. For example, involvement of those medically qualified is required to ensure appropriate clearance for exercise management, especially in light of concurrent pathologies. Those with a physiotherapy (physical therapy) background can contribute to exercise program design and implementation for people with chronic heart failure. Those from an exercise physiology background will have significant expertise in monitoring and progressing such programs, and are able to individualise adjustments for optimal outcomes from exercise training. And, our colleagues with expertise in health and exercise psychology can make further contributions in line with the psychosocial aspects of exercise management of chronic heart failure.
Aside from this lead paper on exercise training in chronic heart failure, our sports medicine section includes a paper that establishes normative values for hip strength in football players, the findings of which can assist the management of athletes’ return to play following injury. Our sports injury section includes a systematic review of the effectiveness of external ankle supports in the prevention of inversion ankle sprains. We also include, under physical activity and health, a paper reporting on motor fitness in Dutch youth over a 26-year period. Not surprising to some, the paper highlights that neuromotor fitness has significantly declined over this time. In our sport science section we include another review paper, this time covering the physiological attributes of triathletes — the paper concludes that triathletes are able to obtain similar physiological values as single-sport athletes, despite their division of training time among three sports. In our biomechanics section we publish an interesting paper that investigates structural asymmetry of the pelvis and how it is influenced by the asymmetrical nature of lateral dominant sports. We also include, in our motor control and learning section, a paper that investigated the effect of heat exposure on response time in field hockey goalkeepers.
As this editorial highlights only a few of the many papers included in this issue, I encourage you to study the issue for other areas of interest, and also to listen to our regular podcasts (see iTunes or www.jsams.org) that include interviews with our authors on their work.
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