Health and Performance in the National Para Powerlifting Team: Associations Between Injuries, Sleep Parameters,...

Background: Monitoring health-related variables across a competitive season is essential to understand factors associated with performance in Paralympic athletes. However, evidence on the interplay between sleep, mood states, nutritional factors, injuries, and performance remains limited. Objective: To examine the associations between injuries, sleep parameters, nutritional factors, mood states, and performance in Para powerlifting athletes during a competitive cycle. Methods: Twenty-four athletes from the Brazilian National Para powerlifting team were assessed at three time points: baseline (~3 months pre-competition), pre-competition (upon arrival), and post-competition (day after the event). Data were collected using standardized instruments and analyzed in R. Descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney U tests, Spearman's correlations, Friedman tests, and individual delta values (Δ) were applied. Results: No significant between-group differences were observed in pre-competition cross-sectional analyses. Longitudinally, sleep duration was the only variable consistently differing between performance groups. Athletes who matched or improved performance showed greater sleep stability, whereas those who did not improve exhibited larger post-competition increases in sleep duration. Negative mood states decreased over time, and baseline vigor was higher in the higher-performing group. Sleep duration changes were negatively correlated with performance variation (ρ = -0.575, p = 0.003). Conclusions: Sleep duration was the variable most consistently associated with performance variation. Mood changes reflected reduced negative affect over time. Findings support longitudinal monitoring in Para powerlifting, although caution is warranted due to the observational design and small sample.