The Effect of Sport-Specific Brain Endurance Training on Performance in Elite Orienteering Athletes

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors, thank you for sending me your work for review. The work addresses an important and under-researched topic, which determines its value. The work is interesting, but requires corrections and additions in individual sections. In my opinion, it is not suitable for publication in this form, which does not mean that it can be published after being amended; I leave that decision to the editors. Regarding the comments in the individual sections:
Introduction: Please add to the introduction the point that increased concentration on tasks and analysis of the race route and its solutions can also affect the nervous system. Competitive level, experience, and the pressure of results can also influence this. This is a very important issue, especially in orienteering, where, in addition to the physical load, there is also the mental and intellectual load associated with the type of discipline practiced. In the Materials and Methods section:
Please include a complete flowchart illustrating the entire course of the research experiment, including all activities and actions, including the selection and selection of the research sample, its size, measurements and tests performed, and other specific steps. This will provide potential readers with a clear understanding of what, how, and when was implemented in these studies.
- In this section, please also provide a more detailed description of the interval training sessions, including their intensity, volume, scope, form, and specificity.
- In this section, please also add and describe in detail the inclusion and exclusion criteria used in the study. They are partially provided, but a more detailed and complete description is requested.
In the Results section:It would be helpful to include a correlation between the competitive experience or athletic level of the participants and the measured parameters. Both competitive experience and athletic level can influence better decision-making, reduce nervous system strain, and optimized training in orienteering competitors, which may result in better athletic performance.
- I also did not observe results broken down by gender, which could also be an interesting observation.
(I understand the sample size is small, but perhaps gender differences would be significant.)

Discussion:
In this section, please add the topic of correlations between the measured parameters and gender, competitive experience, or athletic level. All of these factors may be important and have a significant impact on cognitive performance, which, as research shows, can be important in orienteering competitors achieving better athletic performance.

best regards

Author Response

Dear Authors, thank you for sending me your work for review. The work addresses an important and under-researched topic, which determines its value. The work is interesting but requires corrections and additions in individual sections. In my opinion, it is not suitable for publication in this form, which does not mean that it can be published after being amended; I leave that decision to the editors. Regarding the comments in the individual sections.

Response: Thank you for the comments and we agree that it is an understudied but highly relevant topic. Below, we have replied to every reviewer comment and clarified the revisions made. 

Introduction: Please add to the introduction the point that increased concentration on tasks and analysis of the race route and its solutions can also affect the nervous system. Competitive level, experience, and the pressure of results can also influence this. This is a very important issue, especially in orienteering, where, in addition to the physical load, there is also the mental and intellectual load associated with the type of discipline practiced. In the Materials and Methods section:

Response: We appreciate the essential point regarding the significant mental and intellectual load in orienteering, which affects the nervous system alongside the physical demands. We have revised the Introduction to emphasize the sport's Dual-Tasking nature. This revision includes acknowledging that competitive pressure and inexperience increase cognitive load and stress responses, while neurological efficiency helps mitigate mental strain. Furthermore, the combined cognitive-physical demands are highlighted as a unique feature that acutely stimulates brain function. Please see the changes in lines 43-49 and 80-87.

Please include a complete flowchart illustrating the entire course of the research experiment, including all activities and actions, including the selection and selection of the research sample, its size, measurements and tests performed, and other specific steps. This will provide potential readers with a clear understanding of what, how, and when was implemented in these studies.

Response: We agree that this information is important for study transparency. In the original manuscript in the Results-section we have Fig 1 that contains some of this information (sample size, time point for performed test). We have added to the figure information about which specific test that were done on T0, T1 and T2 and hope this visually improves the understanding of what was done and when. We have also moved the figure into the Methods-section.     

- In this section, please also provide a more detailed description of the interval training sessions, including their intensity, volume, scope, form, and specificity.

Response: Very good point. We have added more information about the HIT sessions on type, intensity and specificity, so that transparency of this has been improved.

 

- In this section, please also add and describe in detail the inclusion and exclusion criteria used in the study. They are partially provided, but a more detailed and complete description is requested.

Response: Thank you for the relevant comment. We have specified inclusion and exclusion criteria in the beginning of the Methods-section under Design and Participants.

In the Results section:It would be helpful to include a correlation between the competitive experience or athletic level of the participants and the measured parameters. Both competitive experience and athletic level can influence better decision-making, reduce nervous system strain, and optimized training in orienteering competitors, which may result in better athletic performance.

Response:

We agree that competitive experience and athletic level likely affect decision making and would potentially affect performance in the RCA test and we considered doing these in the process. The little sample size is a natural barrier for a meaningful correlation analysis. On top of this, there are several additional variables that should be considered if we were to do a meaningful correlation analysis (for instance sleep, general well-being, restitution level from earlier training sessions and competitions etc.). Furthermore, identifying a strong and trustworthy scaling of competitive level or athletic level in orienteering is debatable – VO2max is likely insufficient since it does not include cognitive orienteering skills and competitive experience does not include talent or unique physiological characteristics. For the above reasons that we discussed early on, we argue that any conclusions from correlation analyses with be very weak and speculative. And therefore, we have left these out.   

 

- I also did not observe results broken down by gender, which could also be an interesting observation.
(I understand the sample size is small, but perhaps gender differences would be significant.)

Response:

Thank you for this comment. As for the correlation analyses, this was considered early on in the project but was excluded as an aim of the study. This was based on two arguments: 1) The statistical power of the study was calculated as described in the Methods section and this would be severely impaired if we divided the sample into two smaller groups; 2) From the existing literature we have not been able to find indications that gender is an effect modifier of brain endurance training on the general or sport-specific cognitive performance nor on physical performance. After this reviewer comment, however, we have investigated our data on the RCA test and performed an exploratory t-test to see whether RCA time change after the BET period was different between gender – and it was not (p=0.39; 95% CI: -2.4:1.0 seconds). Based on these considerations, we argue not to include gender specific analyses.

 

Discussion:
In this section, please add the topic of correlations between the measured parameters and gender, competitive experience, or athletic level. All of these factors may be important and have a significant impact on cognitive performance, which, as research shows, can be important in orienteering competitors achieving better athletic performance.

Response: Please see our comments above arguing not to include these analyses in the paper.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

MS title:             The effect of sport-specific brain endurance training on performance in elite orienteering athletes

The aim of the study was to examine the impact of a 6-week sport-specific BET-intervention on cognitive and physical performance in elite orienteering athletes.

 

Main concerns:

• This reviewer assumes that the BET training i.e., RCA part of the programme used in the present study is a novel intervention, and thus no previous publication is available to support this part of the study. Nonetheless, a much greater details of the BET intervention should be provided to help the reader better appreciate and understand how mentally challenging the BET training is/was, i.e., to fully comprehend the “stressful/mentally challenging” of the participants when they undergone the BET. More details of the BET programme such as: is there a sort of progression in the BET, i.e., the BET training becomes more mentally stressful or challenging from start week 1 until to the end of programme week 6; can the amount of mental “loading/stress” of the BET be quantified;  is there a way that the participant will be able to gauge how he/she is “successful” or “unsuccessful” in coping with the BET training programme; etc, etc. All of this info will hopefully allow the readers to assess the validity of the BET training programme.
• Because this study as a single-arm cross-over experimental design protocol with the Control condition conducted first before the Intervention condition, there is a clearly a concern of an order effects – with the participants become “better” or “improved” of being exposed to the initial control condition – which the authors tried to address in the limitation section. However, this reviewer sincerely believe that it would have been optimal if the participants have had been the intervention condition being exposed first before control.
• With the withdrawal and drop-off of participants – what is the current statistical power of the present study.
• How reliable is the “sport-specific cognitive test”? Please provide numerical evidence such the inter-class correlation or typical or technical error or smallest worthwhile change for the reliability of the test.
• For the post-hoc Student paired t-test, since you will doing multiple comparison, shouldn’t your p value be more stringent, i.e., 0.05/3 or less than 0.016 to be more certain.

Minor issues:

• Throughout the manuscript. Please remove the “.” at the end of the word “min”. It causes some confusion to the reading pattern/smoothness/flow of the sentence.
• Throughout the Discussions section, authors should try to be more explicit with the term “performance” i.e., to be more specific with them as “physical performance”, or “exercise performance” or “sport-specific performance” or “mental performance”. And this terminology should be the same in the Discussion section.
• Line 204 – 207. These data should be in the Methods section.
• Table 1. Please use lower-case for the tests’ wordings. Perhaps to break-up the tests into 2 section of the 1000m and 5000 m part - for easy of reader.
• References section. Please delete the words “[internet]” and also “[cited XXX] for all references and to include their DOIs instead.

Author Response

The aim of the study was to examine the impact of a 6-week sport-specific BET-intervention on cognitive and physical performance in elite orienteering athletes.

 

Main concerns:

• This reviewer assumes that the BET training i.e., RCA part of the programme used in the present study is a novel intervention, and thus no previous publication is available to support this part of the study. Nonetheless, a much greater details of the BET intervention should be provided to help the reader better appreciate and understand how mentally challenging the BET training is/was, i.e., to fully comprehend the “stressful/mentally challenging” of the participants when they undergone the BET. More details of the BET programme such as: is there a sort of

progression in the BET, i.e., the BET training becomes more mentally stressful or challenging from start week 1 until to the end of programme week 6; can the amount of mental “loading/stress” of the BET be quantified;  is there a way that the participant will be able to gauge how he/she is “successful” or “unsuccessful” in coping with the BET training programme; etc, etc. All of this info will hopefully allow the readers to assess the validity of the BET training programme.

Response: Thank you for this important comment. In the supplementary material we have added a figure illustrating the development in RCA during BET. Here we report the development in average time spent per RCA task and the % of correct answers during the BET period. We comment on this in the Results section as well in line 281-285. Furthermore, we quantified the mental load of the RCA part of the BET period using the questionnaires and we have added the results of this in the Results section in lines 281-285.

In regard to whether the RCA was successful or not, please see lines 160-161 in the Methods section, where this is described.

Because this study as a single-arm cross-over experimental design protocol with the Control condition conducted first before the Intervention condition, there is a clearly a concern of an order effects – with the participants become “better” or “improved” of being exposed to the initial control condition – which the authors tried to address in the limitation section. However, this reviewer sincerely believe that it would have been optimal if the participants have had been the intervention condition being exposed first before control.

Response: Thanks for the comment. The reviewer may have a point that a reverse order could have been chosen. The primary reason for the present order was that since we hypothesized that BET would be effectful on orienteering performance we chose to place this before the most prioritized championship namely the World Championships. This was chosen in close co-operation with the national team coach at an early stage. In addition, we believe that there would have been a greater risk of a carry-over effect if we had placed the BET period first since we have no data on the duration of a possible BET effect. And given the fact that we had no time for a wash-out period, the present choice was made.  

• With the withdrawal and drop-off of participants – what is the current statistical power of the present study.

Response: Thanks for the comment. As observed, we had enough statistical power to find a significant difference in time used per RCA task (a primary endpoint). In our opinion and after consulting our statistician, calculating high post hoc power would confirm that we successfully detected this and would not provide new information. We have provided 95% CI for all results, and we hope that the readers can interpret the validity and relevance of the findings from these.

 

• How reliable is the “sport-specific cognitive test”? Please provide numerical evidence such the inter-class correlation or typical or technical error or smallest worthwhile change for the reliability of the test.

Response: Unfortunately, we do not have this information and can only refer to the fact that there was no difference in the RCA performance following the CON period at T0 versus T2, where no specific RCA tasks were performed. There was no significant difference in response time between these time points. We are aware that this is not a satisfactory measure of reliability, however unfortunately that is all we have. We have added a sentence in the limitations paragraph on this in lines 460-463 to provide transparancy.   

• For the post-hoc Student paired t-test, since you will doing multiple comparison, shouldn’t your p value be more stringent, i.e., 0.05/3 or less than 0.016 to be more certain.

Response: We are aware of the multiple test risk and finding a false positive. We chose not to use lower p-values since this would reduce our statistical power in an already low sample size. And this would significantly increase the risk of type II errors and miss real effects. Furthermore, using for example a Bonferroni adjustment of p-values assumes that the test used are independent and in this case they are not (i.e. time points are not independent). To address any risk of false positives and better explain any significant findings we have added 95% Confidence Intervals for all tests.

 

Minor issues:

• Throughout the manuscript. Please remove the “.” at the end of the word “min”. It causes some confusion to the reading pattern/smoothness/flow of the sentence.

Response: Done.

• Throughout the Discussions section, authors should try to be more explicit with the term “performance” i.e., to be more specific with them as “physical performance”, or “exercise performance” or “sport-specific performance” or “mental performance”. And this terminology should be the same in the Discussion section.

Response: Good point. We have revised this and are now more consistent. Please see changes in manuscript.

• Line 204 – 207. These data should be in the Methods section.

Response: We have looked at those specific lines, which are already a part of the Methods section and therefore we have left it unchanged.

 

• Table 1. Please use lower-case for the tests’ wordings. Perhaps to break-up the tests into 2 section of the 1000m and 5000 m part - for easy of reader.

Response: Thank you for the comment. This has been corrected.

• References section. Please delete the words “[internet]” and also “[cited XXX] for all references and to include their DOIs instead.

Response: References have been updated and DOIs have been added.

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors, thank you for sending the new, revised version of the manuscript. My comments and requests have been incorporated into the new version of the manuscript. The topic is very interesting, and the mental strain associated with orienteering, and the ability to cope with it, can likely influence the achievement of specific athletic results. I am very pleased that this type of study has appeared, as it can be helpful in programming the training process and better understanding athletes. I recommend the work for publication.

Sincerely,

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for making the changes. Nothing to add.