The lockdown imposed in Italy to reduce the spread of COVID-19 posited unusual challenges to people practicing sports and physical activities. The rebooting of activities highlighted the need to cope with new behaviors and routines, such as wearing a face mask while exercising. We conducted a web-based survey in Italy at the start of physical activities’ rebooting, to investigate how people reacted to the new norms. Participants completed the questionnaires assessing insomnia, regulatory self-efficacy, optimism, mood states, and mental toughness. Age, (...) gender, and environment were assumed as design variables. Results showed that in outdoor activities, the younger females as compared to the older manifest less regulatory self-efficacy, while the younger males manifest more regulatory self-efficacy than the older. In indoor activities, a reversed pattern of regulatory-self-efficacy was observed. Regarding life orientation, younger participants showed less optimism and positive expectation for the future and seem to be more exposed to the unexpected effects of the restrictions: they showed more sleep disturbances, confusion, depression, anger, and fatigue and less vigor and mental toughness than older participants. An understanding of the psychological implications of the rebooting phase can support the enactment of more appropriate behaviors to practice sports and physical activities when living at the time of the coronavirus. (shrink)

Previous research has documented that type 2 diabetes mellitus is associated with cognitive impairment. Psychological variables were repeatedly investigated to understand why T2DM patients are poorly active, despite standards of medical care recommends performing aerobic and resistance exercise regularly and reducing the amount of time spent sitting. This exploratory study aims to investigate how affective variables as thoughts, feelings, and individuals’ stage of exercise adoption can modulate low cognitive performances during an experimental procedure based on exercise. The Exercise Thoughts Questionnaire, (...) Exercise-Induced Feeling Scale, and Physical Activity Stage of Change were administered to a sample of 12 T2DM patients. The Bivalent Shape Task alone, BST with exercise [control exercise recovery + BST], and BST with metaboreflex [post-exercise muscle ischemia + BST] were used as mental task, and response time to congruent, incongruent, and neutral stimuli was recorded. Concomitant cerebral oxygenation was evaluated by near-infrared spectroscopy. As expected, T2DM patients performed significantly better when the stimulus was presented in congruent trials. In the CER + BST session, T2DM patients showed longer reaction time to incongruent trials than in the PEMI + BST and BST alone sessions. Positive feelings toward exercise seem to modulate cognitive performances in high challenging task only if T2DM patients were conscious to play exercise. These results could provide some insights for health intervention targeting exercise for patients with T2DM in order to enhance cognitive performances. (shrink)

Endurance sports certainly require an important and delicate task of mental and physical reintegration from the impact of the fatigue induced by the exertion of the sport performance. The topic of the resilience of athletes has been the theme of numerous studies, however, there are few specific works on the psychological resilience of runners. Our study aimed to investigate Resilience in Endurance Runner related to the role of Self-Regulation Modes and Basic Psychological Needs. Especially, the aim of our work was (...) presenting a model where the gratification of the Needs of Autonomy and Competence and the level of Locomotion were the predictors of the two main components of Richardson’s resilience: Homeostatic and Resilient Reintegration. The present study involved 750 endurance runners, members of the Fidal. A SEM analysis was performed combining into one explanatory model the following variables: Autonomy and Competence Satisfaction, Self-Regulatory Locomotion Mode, Homeostatic and Resilient Reintegration. The model showed overall acceptable fit measurements: χ2 = 872.152; CFI = 0.966; TLI = 0.952; RMSEA = 0.058. Results indicated that BPNs and SRMs are predictors of the level of resilience in endurance running athletes. In particular, Resilient Reintegration was mainly affected by Locomotion Mode, which in turn received a major influence from Autonomy Satisfaction. Homeostatic Recovery was found to be affected by Competence Satisfaction. The study pointed out the importance of supporting in endurance runners the gratification of the needs of Autonomy and Competence as key factors capable of enhancing perseverance, timely recovery and psychophysical balance. (shrink)