I realised a lot of time has passed since the last blog article. It is incredible how time flies! A lot has been happening and will try to fill the gaps, I am also learning a lot about agentic AI and implementing quite a few things and so, now it may be the time to renew the blog a bit and try to have a more constant production of hopefully useful short articles on the usual topics.

The Olympic Games in Paris passed, the Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina also finished and we all saw incredible performances and as always amazing stories from the athletes involved. Sports Science keeps moving, nowadays, together with the exponential increase in scientific publications (maybe I should write a blog article about it at some point…), paralleled by the online production of blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels, newsletters, self produced e-books, social media short clips, social media channels and now AI bots, we have moved from an era where information was difficult to access (confined in university libraries and costly subscriptions) to many things easily accessible online (and unfiltered). While we can argue that the process of peer review is painful and far from perfect (you just need to spend some time reading https://retractionwatch.com to realise how broken the system is), the reality is also the proliferation of a lot of non-sense (or as experts in the field termed ‘pseudo-profound bullshit here) mostly driven by commercial interests. Now more than ever, academic institutions should focus on developing critical skills to make sure that the practitioners of tomorrow do not follow those traps and learn what is appropriate rather than falling for the latest fad.

I am a huge fan of making science accessible to everyone, making it easier to understand making it available for free as well as using the new media to write opinions and stimulate thinking (hence the blog). A blog article has much more reach than a scientific publication behind a paywall, despite the pain each researcher has to get through from getting all the necessary institutional and regulatory approvals to even start a data collection (it is getting more and more painful everywhere…), to then write and submit papers (in this day and age I struggle to understand why every journal has its own formatting requirements and has not developed easier platforms to transform the manuscript files and figures facilitating our work…) and finally go through painful (but necessary) hurdles of reviewer’s rounds to then be greeted with an expensive invoice for open access. Maybe this deserves a post in itself at some point. However, despite the pain, I still think that in principle peer review could make things better (if egos are parked at the door) and at least provide some sort of ‘quality check’ before the cat gets out of the bag. Time will tell us how this will develop.

For now, I will just update the readers in what has been happening. On a personal front, I am still very active training and racing triathlon races (completed a T100 last December, loved every minute of the pain 😀) despite a bad injury at the beginning of last year (4c Hamstring tear, pretty neat injury and not done sprinting or jumping, turns out that swim to run transitions post cold swim, can cause some damage in ‘experienced’ athletes 🤦). At work we run a pretty successful conference (see some highlights here), and next year we will run it again to celebrate the 20 years anniversary of our institution. We have been pretty busy publishing some incredible issues of our Aspetar Sports Medicine Journal (link here) where you can access some pretty amazing content completely for free. Our You Tube channel provides access to the pretty amazing Tuesday lectures we host (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkeoBd4A272NvTlC5lxdws55q2aTv0GT2), so make sure you pay a visit.

From a research standpoing, I have been busy with my colleagues producing quite a lot of work. A list of papers and links is here:

Longitudinal Analysis of Variations in Daily Step Counts and Long-Term Implications of COVID-19 Waves and Restriction Phases in Qatar’s Step Into Health Program: Mixed Methods Study.

Majed L, Sayegh S, Dalansi F, Al-Mohannadi AS, Cardinale M, Farooq A.JMIR Public Health Surveill. 2026 Mar 23;12:e76860. doi: 10.2196/76860.PMID: 41871338 Free PMC article.2Cite 

Applying thermal therapy: Comparison of different commercially available heating devices to increase muscle temperature.

Nasir N, Townsend N, Cardinale M, Labidi M, Racinais S.Exp Physiol. 2026 Jan 18. doi: 10.1113/EP092921. Online ahead of print.PMID: 415481033Cite 

Dental health status of professional football players during the Qatar 2023 AFC Asian Cup: a preliminary study.

Alsaey M, Almasri D, Tabben M, Cardinale M, Alkuwari A, Singh GSA, Hashem A.Res Sports Med. 2025 Dec 8:1-13. doi: 10.1080/15438627.2025.2599859. Online ahead of print.PMID: 41360744 Free article.4Cite 

Real-Time Monitoring of Biometric Responses During a 200-km Ultra-Endurance Race Across the Desert.

Esh CJ, Pitsiladis Y, Racinais S, Taylor L, Dablainville V, Belfekih T, Bendimerad F, Pitsiladis A, Verdoukas P, Willems M, Nader N, Dalansi F, Grandjean P, Al-Mulla M, Aldous N, Dossou J, Hassanein YE, Khater N, Miranda H, Cardinale M.Eur J Sport Sci. 2025 Sep;25(9):e70026. doi: 10.1002/ejsc.70026.PMID: 40788281 Free PMC article.5Cite 

Lessons Learned from Implementing Injury and Illness Surveillance in Professional Football: Introducing a New Implementation Framework.

Tabben M, Hassanmirzaei B, Singh G, Miladi R, Chaabane M, McCourt P, Serner A, Clarsen B, Ellouze Z, Mokrani M, Whiteley R, D’Hooghe P, Cardinale M, Schumacher YO, Bahr R.Sports Med. 2025 Oct;55(10):2375-2385. doi: 10.1007/s40279-025-02276-5. Epub 2025 Jul 11.PMID: 40646402 Free PMC article.6Cite 

The Prevalence, Size, and Anatomic Location of Cartilage and Osteochondral Lesions in Athletes With an Acute Ligamentous Ankle Injury.

Baltes TPA, Dalansi F, Al-Naimi MR, Bordalo M, Holtzhausen L, Whiteley R, Cardinale M, D’Hooghe P, Kerkhoffs GMMJ, Tol JL.Am J Sports Med. 2025 Jul;53(9):2173-2180. doi: 10.1177/03635465251344187. Epub 2025 Jun 12.PMID: 40503595 Free PMC article.7Cite 

Muscle regeneration is improved by hot water immersion but unchanged by cold following a simulated musculoskeletal injury in humans.

Dablainville V, Mornas A, Normand-Gravier T, Al-Mulla M, Papakostas E, Olory B, Fermin TM, Zampeli F, Nader N, Alhammoud M, Bayne F, Sanchez AMJ, Cardinale M, Candau R, Bernardi H, Racinais S.J Physiol. 2025 Dec;603(23):7603-7625. doi: 10.1113/JP287777. Epub 2025 May 28.PMID: 40437768 Free PMC article.8Cite 

Differences in Sprinting and Jumping Performance Between Maturity Status Groups in Youth: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

Baker J, Read P, Graham-Smith P, Cardinale M, Jones TW.Sports Med. 2025 Jun;55(6):1405-1427. doi: 10.1007/s40279-025-02198-2. Epub 2025 Mar 25.PMID: 40131714

I also wrote a book chapter for the new FIMS book on the young athlete with colleagues from around the world https://www.researchgate.net/publication/396224540_The_Young_Athlete

I will try to be more active on this blog in the following months, with more topics to discuss and few things to present/share. Keep reading!