Athletic Training and Its Impact on Body Composition and Physical Fitness

Dear Colleagues,

Athletic training plays a fundamental role in the development and optimization of body composition and physical fitness. It encompasses a range of structured physical activities designed to improve strength, endurance, speed, flexibility, and overall performance. The scientific background of this field is rooted in exercise physiology, biomechanics, and sports science, which collectively explain how repeated training stimuli induce physiological adaptations such as muscle hypertrophy, reduced fat mass, improved cardiovascular efficiency, and enhanced metabolic regulation.

Recent advances in research have further clarified the mechanisms underlying these adaptations, including neuromuscular responses, hormonal regulation, and energy system development. Different training modalities—such as resistance, endurance, and high-intensity interval training—have been shown to produce specific and measurable effects on body composition and physical fitness outcomes across diverse populations.

The importance of this research area lies in its wide-ranging applications for athletic performance enhancement, injury prevention, and health promotion. Understanding how athletic training influences physical and physiological parameters is essential for developing evidence-based training programs that optimize performance in athletes while also supporting fitness and well-being in the general population.

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue.

This Special Issue will place strong emphasis on applied and translational perspectives, with a focus on optimizing training strategies to enhance athletic performance and promote health-related fitness outcomes.

The topic is well aligned with the journal’s scope in exercise science, sports science, human performance, and physical activity research, as it integrates both fundamental and applied studies on training-induced adaptations. By focusing on measurable outcomes such as changes in body composition, strength development, aerobic capacity, and overall physical fitness, the Special Issue maintains a clear and focused scope while accommodating a wide range of methodologies and populations.

The scope has been carefully defined to be neither too broad nor too narrow, ensuring coherence across contributions and supporting the collection of at least 10 peer-reviewed articles. If this minimum publication target is achieved, the Special Issue may also be considered for compilation and publication in book form, further enhancing its academic and practical impact.

This Special Issue aims:

to investigate the effects of athletic training on body composition and physical fitness across diverse populations, sports disciplines, and training contexts. It will address key themes including, but not limited to, training-induced changes in body composition (such as fat mass, lean mass, and muscle hypertrophy), physiological adaptations to various training modalities (including strength, endurance, and high-intensity interval training), and the relationship between training load and performance outcomes.  Additional areas of interest include nutrition and recovery strategies that support training adaptations, injury prevention, and rehabilitation in physical conditioning, as well as the use of monitoring tools and emerging technologies to assess fitness and performance outcomes. Both original research articles and comprehensive review papers are welcome. Submissions may include experimental, longitudinal, and cross-sectional studies, as well as systematic reviews and meta-analyses, and applied or translational research. Methodological contributions introducing innovative approaches to assessing body composition and physical fitness, or to optimizing training programs, are also encouraged.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Effects of athletic training on body composition (fat mass, lean mass, and muscle hypertrophy);
• Physiological adaptations to resistance, endurance, and high-intensity interval training;
• Relationships between training load, recovery, and physical fitness outcomes;
• Performance enhancement and sport-specific conditioning strategies;
• Exercise physiology mechanisms underlying training-induced adaptations;
• Nutritional and recovery strategies supporting training effectiveness;
• Injury prevention and rehabilitation in relation to physical conditioning;
• Monitoring and assessment methods for body composition and physical fitness.

Dr. Raouf Hammami
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• athletic training
• body composition
• physical fitness
• exercise physiology
• strength training
• endurance training
• performance
• training adaptation
• health outcomes
• sports science