Monitoring training status in professional ballet dancers

Methods of non-invasive monitoring of training status for prevention of staleness in athletes and dancers need to be developed and evaluated. In order to monitor physiologic and psychologic changes which may result from overstraining, we measured urinary excretion of free norepinephrine (NE) and epinephrine (E) and mood states over 5 weeks of an intensive ballet season in 12 (6 men, 6 women) professional dancers. First morning urine voids (AM) were collected at the start of the season and following the only off-day each week with final collection on the last day of the season. Additional urine samples were collected before (pre) and after (post) each dancer's subjectively-rated single most difficult performance. Profile of Mood States (POMS) was completed by and collected from each dancer at the same time as the AM urine samples. NE and E excretions (nanograms per mg creatinine) increased significantly with time (r = 0.91, p less than 0.02, and r = 0.94, p less than 0.01, respectively) from beginning to end of season, and pre to post (51.1 +/- 7.3 to 115.6 +/- 19.7, p less than 0.001 and 19.3 +/- 3.2 to 37.7 +/- 4.2, p less than 0.001, respectively). Women had a significantly higher excretion of NE than did men (F = 9.33, p = 0.014) and no gender differences existed in the excretion of E (F = 0.57, p = 0.484).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)