Howell DR, et al. – This investigation gauged the neurocognitive, postural, dual–task and visual abilities of female Olympic–style boxers prior to and after participation in a tournament. Either improvement or no notable changes were reported in the test performance after competing in an Olympic–style boxing tournament, relative to pre–tournament performance, among female boxers. Several test tasks were novel for the boxers. Hence, practice effects possibly contributed to improved performance. Clinicians ought to be aware of potential practice effects when using ringside neurological tests, during the presence of short time frame between assessments.

Methods

• The enrollees included 61 females who completed the modified Balance Error Scoring System (mBESS), King-Devick test and 3 m timed-up-and-go test in single-task and dual-task conditions.
• A subset (n=31) completed the CogState computerised neurocognitive test. Initial testing was completed before the 2016 Women’s World Boxing Championships.
• Each candidate repeated the testing protocol within a day of elimination.
• No concussion was reported.
• A comparison was performed of the pretournament and post-tournament performance variables through paired t-tests or Wilcoxon signed-rank tests.

Results

• Enrollees completed a mean of 7.5±4.5 rounds of Olympic-style boxing over 2-8 days.
• Post-tournament scores were markedly lower than pretournament scores for total mBESS (2.2±1.9 errors vs 5.5±2.9 errors, p<0.001, d=1.23) and King-Devick time (14.2±3.9 s vs 18.0±8.3 s, p=0.002, d=0.53).
• Processing speed was notably faster after the boxing tournament (maze chase task: 1.39±0.34 correct moves/second vs 1.17± 0.44 correct moves/second, p=0.001, d=0.58).
• There were no prominent variations across time, for the other obtained outcome variables.