Impact of COVID-19-Related Sports Activity Disruptions on the Physical Fitness of Japanese Adolescent Athletes

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The main aim of this study was to examine the impact of COVID-19-related sports activity disruptions on the physical fitness of adolescent athletes. Regarding the authors, I would like to congratulate and thank them for their effort and motivation involved in this research study. Although the conclusions are based on the conducted research and open up new directions for future research, the article still requires a lot of work to be accepted for publication.

To begin with, in my opinion, the topic of the article should be reworded, as it is quite broad and concerns a relatively small number of respondents, in addition probably representing a single nationality. Please consider adding the country or nationality of the athletes to the title of the article.

In the article, the authors present sentences such as "our sports medicine center…" or "our university's hospital…". Such wording must be changed, and the content should include what medical center or hospital is meant, so that readers do not have to check the affiliation of researchers while reading.

The abstract should be supplemented with methodological issues. In this short summary, readers should be informed about the methods, techniques and research tools used. These things, moreover, need to be deepened in the content of the publication. The authors of the article have described the research Procedure in a very good way, other information needs to be clarified. I propose that the chapter on methodology should have subsections: Design and Participants, Measures, Procedure and Data Analysis.

Was the study treated in accordance with the guidelines in the American Psychological Association's Publications Manual on consent and anonymity? Please complete the information on this topic in the article.

The introduction is trivial and has little of the elements of a research article – the included informations are widely known by the public worldwide. It essentially needs to be expanded (it is currently extremely short), and supplemented with a variety of scientific literature. Please write down, for example, how the pandemic influenced the physical activity of people in different age groups, in different multicultural environments, of different genders. Similar reservations can be made about the discussion. There is no mention in the article of similar research or a comprehensive diagnosis of the problem. The article should cover the topic as much as possible, while in its current form the topic is only indicated. I believe that the inclusion of a minimum of 40 footnotes, including a significant expansion of the introduction and the addition of a discussion, would show a far greater orientation of researchers to the topic.

The authors of the article should be commended for a good research procedure, as well as for the indication of study limitations, but what about data availability? Authors must supplement the text with Data Availability Statement, as well as the Conflicts of Interest section. Please also consider adding Supplementary Material indicating all data that have been statistically treated.

In my opinion, the article currently does not meet the publication requirements, but after making significant major revision, I would be happy to read its re-version. I strongly encourage the authors to continue this work, because I see a real opportunity for publication in Adolescents.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The article is well written, consistent, understandable

Title is adequate.

 

However some minor corrections should be done:

 

1. There is no real conlusion of research at the end of abstract although the conslusions are at the end of an article. Not in the same words but should be included at the end in abstract

 

Some fresh articles should be cited in a paper:

2. I recommend citate at the end of first paragraph in Intro an article

http://tss.awf.poznan.pl/files/2021/Vol%2028%20no%204/3_Diedhiou_TSS_2021_284_265-272.pdf

 

where the Authors gives a sentence:

‘when trying to prevent the COVID-19 infection or any epidemic in the short term, it is recommended not to neglect its effects on the quality of life and healthy lifestyle behaviors of the general population in the long term’

 

 

3. The sentence at the end of Intro ‘Therefore, the fitness status of adolescent athletes should be assessed before they resume sports, to prevent such injuries.’ Should be refered to any article for instance I recommend this

http://tss.awf.poznan.pl/files/2021/Vol%2028%20no%202/4_Attar_TSS_2021_282_109-115.pdf

4. Methods

„This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of our university’s hospital (file number: E-941).’

 

I suggest to add for what period approval is valid, not only in ‘appendix’ but also in methods. However Editor might decide if it is correct this as it is now.

 

5. Was the body temperaturę was the only criterion of exclusion? If others – please include.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted human beings greatly. It is essential to explore the influence of the pandemic on adolescent athletes as in other fields of humans. Here are my suggestions for the manuscript:

 

1. The physical fitness of adolescent athletes would decline undoubtedly once they have been infected by the SARS-CoV-2. In addition, the adverse effects of COVID-19 vaccination including fever, malaise, myalgia, or rarely, symptoms of myocarditis or pericarditis, would influence their performance also. Please supplement the infective and vaccinated status of COVID-19 of the participants.

 

2. The participated athletes in the study focus on sports events including Table tennis and Kendo. It would be better to recruit athletes focusing on physical fitness events including field events, track events, and swimming to generalize the elucidation.

 

3. Please reveal and elucidate the results of subgroup analyses (gender and sports) of KFM/KEM.

 

4. Since the statistical analyses have been introduced in the part of materials and methods, please delete the superscripts and annotations in the tables.

 

5. Please supplement the internet questionnaire of the coaches in the part of supplementary materials.

 

6. “Neuromuscular inhibition” should be replaced with “neuromuscular function” on page 6, line 10. Since you have attributed the gap between KFM/KEM and jumping height to neuromuscular function, please describe it thoroughly with more references.

 

7. Please make a complete review on grammar and spellings before your resubmission, “potemtial” should be replaced with “potential” on page 6, line 28.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I sincerely thank the authors for improving this manuscript. However, the current new discussion proposal is practically no different from the old version. The article has been strengthened, although very little of the discussion has been revised or reworded. The discussion still lacks more comparison to other studies and their findings. If this element is further strengthened, the article will present a really good, publication-worthy level.

Author Response

We thank you for your suggestions.
We have added citations of Japanese physical fitness data to our discussion, as well as opinions and supporting literature on what to do when returning to sports.

We believe that we have been able to fully incorporate your suggestion.

Best regards 

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for the detailed revision. It provides us with valuable information about adolescent sports medicine during the COVID-19 pandemic. By the way, just a minor suggestion to delete the statistical analysis supplement in Table1.

Author Response

Dear reviewer 3

Thank you for your suggestion.

I apologize for leaving out a simple mistake.

Because of your comments, this is going to be a good paper. Thank you very much.