Heat, Sport and Health. Part 1: Psychological Impact of Heat on Athletes' Health

The individual determinants of sports performance, whether physical, physiological or psychological, are the subject of a dense literature aiming to understand better what makes an athlete perform and how, through training, one can lead him or her to progress. In this search for performance, it very quickly became apparent that the environment could play an important role and some training programs now incorporate environmental conditions as one of several levers. Training at altitude or in a hot and humid environment are indeed avenues that have been successfully explored. But if the environment is used as a lever for training, it is because it places physiological and psychological constraints on the organism that require adaptations. Indeed, the human body, repeatedly exposed to exercise conditions that exceed its initial capacities, adapts. This is the fundamental principle of training. However, extreme environmental constraints such as high temperature, when not controlled, as is the case in competition, amplify the stress imposed on the body, and the athlete may, driven by his or her desire to win, go beyond his or her limits and expose himself or herself to significant health risks. This problem has recently become particularly salient with, on the one hand, global warming which is progressively raising the temperatures at which competitions are held, and on the other hand, the desire of certain emerging countries to offer major international competitions in environments which are sometimes particularly unsuitable for aerobic performance due to temperature and even hygrometry conditions which go well beyond the thermolysis capacities of the human organism during intense effort. If the components of sports performance (physical, physiological and psychological) are well documented in the scientific literature and fairly well taken into account by coaches and athletes, the thermal constraints in which training and competitions take place are much less considered, even though taking them into account is essential to perform without risk to health. The study of these constraints on psychological functioning is therefore a major issue. In this first part of the interview, Drs. Coudevylle, Collado and Sinnapah discuss the negative impact of the hot climate on psychological functioning (perceptions, cognition, affects) as well as on the associated risk of injury or accident. (C) 2022 Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.