STUDY LIMITATIONS
During a sports championship, many hormonal factors can affect the performance of athletes. Measuring salivary cortisol levels during a long CrossFit® competition was important to understand the impact of this sport on the body of athletes and to discover whether their performance can be improved.
With increasing numbers of CrossFit® practitioners and more competitions throughout the year, understanding the action of cortisol is critical, either to identify overtraining or a differential diagnosis of post-competition burnout syndrome.
The main limitation of this study was the impossibility to control the rest time of athletes and to confirm if athletes did not use any stimulant substance.