Endocrine Aspects in Performance and Recovery in Basketball

The effectiveness of exercise training depends on the training load and on the individual ability to tolerate it, and an imbalance between the two may lead to under- or overtraining. Therefore, efforts have been made to find objective parameters to quantify the balance between training load and the athlete’s tolerance. One of the unique features of exercise is that it leads to a simultaneous increase in antagonistic circulating mediators. On the one hand, exercise stimulates anabolic components such as testosterone, growth hormone (GH), and IGF-I (insulin-like growth factor-I). On the other hand, exercise elevates catabolic hormones like cortisol and pro-inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin-6 (IL-6). The very fine balance between the anabolic and inflammatory/catabolic response to exercise will determine the effectiveness of training and the health consequences of exercise. In this chapter, we review the changes in the anabolic–catabolic hormonal balance and circulating inflammatory cytokines both in single exercise bouts, following prolonged training, and in relation to a competitive match, and we demonstrate how these changes may be used by athletes and their coaching staff to gauge the training intensity focusing on basketball.