Discovery Shuttle, Kennedy Space Center

Orlando, Florida, is the site for two major sports medicine conferences this year.  The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) will hold its annual conference from June 3-6 immediately following the XXVI International Federation of Sports Medicine (FIMS) World Congress of Sports Medicine from May 30-June 3.  It'll be a full agenda for everyone.  Here are a few  highlights I've chosen from the 45th Annual ACSM Conference schedule.  Where possible, I've provided links to articles at this site for background reading.

My choice for early Wednesday morning is the President's Lecture, Doping Control in Olympic Games--Twenty Years of Experience, by FIMS President Eduardo De Rose.  With all the advances in science and medicine, I'd like to know if detection is getting better or if more ways are just being found to cover up the use of banned substances.  Our recent Sportscience article, Bodybuilding as an Olympic Sport touched upon concerns of steroid use.  The lecture sets the stage for the special event that follows:  a three-hour session on International Issues in Olympic Sports Medicine that includes a discussion of the pathological consequences of erythropoetin use in sport.

This year's Wolffe Memorial Lecture is by David Costill, Why can't Johnny jump?  Sounds intriguing, and we're being kept in suspense on what it's about.  If you're not there to hear his talk on Wednesday afternoon, you'll be able to read a short summary in our next issue. Last year Claude Bouchard presented the Wolffe Memorial Lecture on the obesity epidemic, and that topic is still in the forefront of the news reports as genetic discoveries uncover more clues to the problem.  Bouchard returns for a conversational forum with Glenn Gaesser and Charlotte Tate on Thursday morning, June 4th, to discuss Is Obesity Detrimental to Health?  On Thursday afternoon, he chairs a symposium, Recent Advances in the Genetic Dissection of Obesity.

With the increase in sports participation, there's been an increase in injuries especially to the knees. The most common, anterior cruciate ligament  (ACL) injuries, can cause short and long-term disability. There's an opportunity to update your knowledge at the clinical colloquium on Wednesday from 2:30-4 pm:  Where Do We Stand with ACL Injuries by DeVita, Ireland and Richards.

A clinical lecture by J. Mike Ray, Injuries in Triathlons, follows the ACL colloquium on Wednesday from 4:15-5:45 pm.  My curiosity is roused enough to pop into it at the end of the day.   Bike crashes resulting in broken collarbones or a cracked pelvis are certainly a risk; and after the swim and bike, the body’s going to pound on the run.  Most triathlons are endurance events and dehydration can lead to serious consequences.  Shoulder injuries in swimming, neck injuries from biking in an aerodynamic position, and running injuries such as iliotibial band  (ITB) syndrome also occur in triathlons.

And it may have been two years ago, but Tim Noakes' provocative Wolffe Memorial Lecture, Challenging Beliefs, continues to generate lively discussion.  Recently, he elaborated on some issues in a posting to the sportscience list. You can access the posting through our Forum search form filling in limitations for maximal exercise performance as the subject and February 1, 1998 as the beginning search date.  In Orlando, he'll be chairing The Difficult Tendinopathies—Are Old Myths Undermining Our Treatment? (Tim Noakes, chair, with Kibler, Khan, Renstrom, participants) Thursday, June 4th from 9am to noon. Tendon injuries are debilitating and generally not well managed or cured by the forms of treatment that are currently available.  As a result, most elite athletes with more severe tendon injuries are likely to have their careers seriously affected.  Scientific rationale still needs to uncover the true nature of the pathology of these injuries (degeneration versus inflammation) and their causes so that better pharmaceutical,  physiotherapeutic, and surgical techniques can be developed with the aim of curing rather than simply palliating these injuries.  The speakers will address these issues with applications of common tendon injuries involving the rotator cuff, elbow, and jumper's knee. 

Also in Thursday's overflowing schedule are Paul Greenhaff,  J. Duncan MacDougall, and Bjorn Ekblom  participating in a mini-symposium mid-morning on Oral Creatine Supplementation: Facts, Fallacies and Future Directions.  For some background reading, check out our training & technology review article on creatine by Richard Kreider.

Other symposiums on Thursday morning include:  Physical Activity and Function among Older Adults and also at the same time, Weight Regulation in Physical Activity and Sport with participants Berkowitz, Clarkson, DiPietro, Malina, and Stachenfeld. They'll address the anthropological, psychological and nutritional aspects of the relationship between body weight and exercise and discuss strategies for reducing the risk of disordered eating in athletics.  Another weight symposium more closely related to the recent wrestlers deaths is the clinical lecture on Friday from 2:30-4 pm:  Wrestling with Wrestling Weight Rules: What’s Happened, What’s Happening, What’s Next with Oppliger, Kiningham, Bupp, and Herrmann.

Thursday afternoon has several all-afternoon symposiums as well as a number of shorter sessions.  A shorter session from 1:15-2:45 includes a colloquium,  Anabolic-Androgenic Steroids:  Current and Future Issues.  For background reading, check out the anabolic steroid Encyclopedia articles at our site.

My pick of the afternoon is the mini-symposia from 3-4:30 pm, Enhancement of Sports Performance:  Can Scientists Detect It?   The first speaker is Will Hopkins, who will identify the smallest enhancement of performance that matters for an elite athlete in an event.  He'll then explain the problems in detecting that enhancement with lab or field tests.   John Hawley will then evaluate the different types of tests used by researchers.  Louise Burke rounds out the discussion by focusing on claims for and against specific nutritional interventions on performance.  Each speaker will offer practical advice to researchers on improving the design of studies in which athletic performance is the outcome. Another forum going on at that time is by Armstrong, Coggan and Montain:  Carbohydrate Consumption During Exercise Always Enhances Performance.  Always?  These speakers will presumably focus on endurance events and compare the effects of various forms of energy supplementation.

Sport science researchers in the US looking for funding will want to take note of a special lecture  from 5-5:45 pm on Thursday.  Stephen Katz will discuss National Institutes of Health (NIH) agenda and funding opportunities for exercise and physical activity research. As public funds become less available, researchers are turning to private enterprise as a source of funding.  Pharmaceutical and health food companies offer funding opportunities, but may naturally lean toward funding those studies they think will result in positive results for their product.  The result:  possibly a preponderance of studies in favor of something and few showing negative results. Public funds are the clearest way to ensure equal consideration of research projects.

If you miss the drug talks earlier in the week, there’s still a chance to catch one on Friday:   Drug Use, Testing and Research in Athletics from 9-12 noon (William J. Kraemer, Catlin, Clarkson, Petr, Yarasheski, participants).  And if you’re not sure what to do after the Ferret articles on sit ups, there’s a symposium from 10–1 pm, Low Back Pain:  A Problem of Activity and Exercise Intolerance.  Friday morning choices also include a tutorial lecture by Lambert:   The Heart Rate Monitors for Use in Observing Training Status and Exercise Intensity and Insights into Chronic Fatigue Syndrome by LaManca, Lapp, and McCully.  Both talks are from 9-10:30 am.

The D.B.Dill historical lecture by Jan Todd on Women and Weights starts off the Friday afternoon agenda from 1-2:15 pm.  Following that is a symposium, Women at Altitude, chaired by Gail Butterfield.  It's been known, yet understudied, that women do not respond to altitude as men do.  Most altitude studies were done on men;  this symposium will discuss results of a multi-year, mult-disciplinary collaborative study of acclimization in women.  Running concurrently from 2:30-5:30 pm is a session on Overtraining in Sport chaired by Richard Kreider.  Speakers will describe factors which may predispose athletes to becoming overtrained, physiological and psychological responses to overtraining, potential markers which may assist in diagnosing overtraining and possible interventions.

What Limits Endurance Performance in the Heat?  Ronald Maughan presents this President’s Lecture Saturday, 8-8:50 am.  A recent training & technology review looked at the usefulness of glycerol as an ergogenic aid during hot conditions, and last year a number of research studies on the effect of heat were presented at the free communication/poster sessions.  For more background, read the heat acclimization article in the Sportscience Encyclopedia.  Following the President’s Lectures, Michael Bergeron chairs a symposium from 9-11:50 am, Mineral Balance in Women During Exercise in the Heat.

Harold Morris chairs a mini-symposium from 9-10:30 am on the effective use of within-subjects designs (another name for the usual trials, experiments, or interventions).  While these designs are attractive due to the control of individual differences and increased statistical power, they require that additional assumptions be met.  The speakers are David Rowe, Will Hopkins and Janet Wigglesworth. They'll discuss the assumptions and possible experimental biases that can confound the results; and Will's going to explain how to use mixed modeling in SAS, or in his words, "the statistical procedure of the millenium."  He'll illustrate his talk with stats programs that are already up on his stats pages.  Scheduled at the same time is a colloquium, Diet Composition and Exercise Performance:  High-Fat or High-Carbohydrate.   Edward Coyle and Wayne Miller debate the issue.

On Saturday afternoon, Joseph Donnelly chairs a symposium,  Is Moderate Intensity, Intermittent Exercise Effective for Fitness or Weight Loss?  Intermittent exercise, was a topic represented by a number of studies at last year’s ACSM poster sessions.  Another popular subject, the older athlete, is a concurrent symposium, Musculoskeletal Concerns in Older Athletes, chaired by Kevin Speer.

The conference ends on Saturday; but  the Second Annual USOC and ACSM Human Performance Summit will be held on Sunday from 8:30 am to 1:00 pm.  You need to get your reservation in early, though; it’s limited to 200 attendees.  This year’s topic:  Overtraining: Myth or Reality.

Much is packed into a busy agenda.  It'd be disappointing to leave Orlando without making time for some of the sights, though.   With the Kennedy Space Center and Walt Disney World nearby, there's plenty to keep traveling companions busy.  For the social set there are horseback rides, canoe trips and even a dolphin interaction program going on during the conference.  Come early, stay late and enjoy the best of both worlds--ACSM and Disney!  See you at the Conference.