Elsevier

Hormones and Behavior

Volume 58, Issue 4, September 2010, Pages 606-613
Hormones and Behavior

Women's intercollegiate volleyball and tennis: Effects of warm-up, competition, and practice on saliva levels of cortisol and testosterone

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2010.06.015Get rights and content

Abstract

In virtually all sports, participants “warm-up” prior to formal competition. Women athletes from a highly ranked varsity college volleyball team and, in a second study, a highly ranked varsity college tennis team gave saliva samples before warm-up, at mid-warm-up (volleyball) or after warm-up (tennis), and immediately after intercollegiate competition. For volleyball and tennis, warm-up was associated with a substantial elevation in saliva levels of testosterone which was carried over through the period of actual competition. Cortisol levels were relatively unchanged during warm-up, but typically rose during competition. Thus, as women prepare for athletic competition by warming up, testosterone levels rise in apparent anticipation of the coming contest and then remain high through the period of play. In volleyball and tennis, after-practice testosterone level was significantly higher than before-practice level, and practice session increases in testosterone (but not cortisol) were positively correlated with increases in testosterone during intercollegiate competition. When practice and competitive play share as yet undetermined key elements, individual differences in this endocrine response to “competition” appear stable across practice and intercollegiate competition.

Introduction

In women's team athletics, competition is usually associated with an increase in salivary testosterone level (e.g., Bateup et al., 2002, Edwards et al., 2006, Edwards et al., 2007) and, depending on the sport, an increase in salivary cortisol (e.g., Edwards et al., 2006, Edwards et al., 2007, Filaire et al., 1996, Filaire et al., 1999, Haneishi et al., 2007). Similar changes have been noted for individual (Booth et al., 1989) and team (Edwards et al., 2006) athletic competitions in men. In men and women these changes presumably parallel changes in serum levels of testosterone and cortisol.

In women's team athletics, testosterone (T) and cortisol (C) levels also appear to increase in anticipation of competition. In one study with college rugby players (Bateup et al., 2002), T and C levels measured in saliva were significantly higher 15 min before competition than 24 h earlier. In another study with women soccer players (Oliveira et al., 2009), saliva T and C levels measured 30 min before competition were significantly higher than levels of these same hormones measured on an earlier neutral day. Anticipatory increases in T and C have been noted for male tennis players (Booth et al., 1989) and judo competitors (Salvador et al., 2003, Suay et al., 1999) as well.

Increases in hormone levels that anticipate competition are typically determined from comparison of samples taken a few minutes before the start of competition with samples obtained either the day before competition or some other “neutral” day of non-competition. Thus, it is not possible to know from these studies precisely when the anticipatory increases in T and/or C begin.

In virtually all sports, participants “warm-up” prior to formal competition. Warm-up routines may include running, stretching, light calisthenics, and sport-specific skill-sharpening drills. All of this is intended to decrease the potential for injury and, physiologically and psychologically, prepare participants for the coming competition. Surprisingly, there are no published studies specifically connecting this period to the changes in hormone levels that appear to anticipate actual athletic competition.

On the premise that a full understanding of the effects of any hormone on physiology and behavior is informed by an appreciation of the settings and circumstances that affect its secretion, we here report the results of two studies designed to determine the effects of warm-up and competition on saliva levels of cortisol and testosterone. The first was conducted with members of a highly ranked women's intercollegiate volleyball team who gave saliva samples immediately before a structured warm-up prior to an important intercollegiate match, again at mid-warm-up, and immediately after the finish of competition. The second study was conducted with members of a highly ranked women's intercollegiate tennis team who gave saliva samples immediately before and after warm-up for their doubles matches against another school, after the completion of the doubles matches, and then again after their singles matches that followed. For purposes of comparison, each study also included analysis of C and T levels for samples obtained immediately before and after practice sessions.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants for the first study were the 15 active members of the 2008 Emory University varsity women's intercollegiate (Division III) volleyball team. A 16th volleyball participant suffered a season-ending injury prior to the start of the study and, although she was at courtside and gave saliva samples, her values were not figured in the analyses for this report. The study was conducted in late October. At the time, Emory was ranked second nationally and the team would finish the season as

Hormone levels and hormone contraception

Baseline (before-practice and before-warm-up on the day of competition) cortisol (C) and testosterone (T) means are shown in Table 1. Hormone values for participants were within the normal range for college-age women (e.g., Dabbs et al., 1995, Gozansky et al., 2005, Kirschbaum and Hellhammer, 1994). For volleyball and tennis, women using oral contraceptives had a slightly lower baseline (before-match-warm-up) testosterone mean than women not using oral contraceptives, but the difference between

Individual differences in baseline levels of cortisol and testosterone

Individual differences in levels of salivary cortisol (Liening et al., 2010) and testosterone (Dabbs, 1990, Edwards et al., 2007) tend to be relatively stable. In general accordance with this, whether for C or T, inter-day correlations between before-practice and before-competition-day-warm-up values were invariably positive, although not always statistically significant.

Warm-up, competition, and practice effects on saliva levels of cortisol

For volleyball players, C levels were little changed as women warmed up in preparation for intercollegiate competition (Fig. 1

Acknowledgments

We thank Emory women's volleyball coach Jenny McDowell, Emory women's tennis coach Amy Bryant, and the women of Emory's 2008 volleyball and 2009 tennis teams for their help in conducting the research described in this article. We thank Jodie Eisner for her assistance in the collection of the saliva samples for the volleyball research and Josh Plotnik and Molly Davis for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Two anonymous reviewers gave the manuscript very careful readings and

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