Les déterminants individuels de la performance sportive, qu’ils soient physiques, physiologiques ou psychologiques, font l’objet d’une littérature dense visant à mieux comprendre ce qui fait qu’un athlète est performant et comment on peut, par le biais de l’entraînement, l’amener à progresser. Dans cette recherche de la performance, il est très vite apparu que l’environnement pouvait jouer un rôle important et certains programmes d’entraînement intègrent aujourd’hui les conditions environnementales comme un levier parmi d’autres (s’entraîner en altitude ou en milieu chaud et humide). Mais si l’environnement est utilisé comme un levier de l’entraînement c’est parce qu’il fait peser sur l’organisme des contraintes physiologiques et psychologiques appelant des adaptations. En effet, le corps humain, exposé de façon répétée à des conditions d’exercice qui dépassent ses capacités initiales, s’adapte. C’est là le principe fondamental de l’entraînement. Or, les contraintes environnementales extrêmes, telles qu’une forte température parfois couplée à une forte hygrométrie, lorsqu’elles ne sont pas maîtrisées, ce qui est le cas en compétition, viennent amplifier le stress imposé à l’organisme, et l’athlète peut, mû par son envie de gagner, aller au-delà de ses limites et s’exposer à des risques importants pour sa santé. L’étude de ces contraintes sur le fonctionnement humain relève donc d’un enjeu majeur. Dans cette première partie d’entretien, les Docteurs Coudevylle, Collado et Sinnapah abordent l’impact négatif du climat chaud sur le fonctionnement psychologique des athlètes ainsi que sur le risque de blessure ou d’accident associé.

The individual determinants of sports performance, whether physical, physiological or psychological, are the subject of a dense literature aiming to understand better what makes an athlete perform and how, through training, one can lead him or her to progress. In this search for performance, it very quickly became apparent that the environment could play an important role and some training programs now incorporate environmental conditions as one of several levers. Training at altitude or in a hot and humid environment are indeed avenues that have been successfully explored. But if the environment is used as a lever for training, it is because it places physiological and psychological constraints on the organism that require adaptations. Indeed, the human body, repeatedly exposed to exercise conditions that exceed its initial capacities, adapts. This is the fundamental principle of training. However, extreme environmental constraints such as high temperature, when not controlled, as is the case in competition, amplify the stress imposed on the body, and the athlete may, driven by his or her desire to win, go beyond his or her limits and expose himself or herself to significant health risks. This problem has recently become particularly salient with, on the one hand, global warming which is progressively raising the temperatures at which competitions are held, and on the other hand, the desire of certain emerging countries to offer major international competitions in environments which are sometimes particularly unsuitable for aerobic performance due to temperature and even hygrometry conditions which go well beyond the thermolysis capacities of the human organism during intense effort. If the components of sports performance (physical, physiological and psychological) are well documented in the scientific literature and fairly well taken into account by coaches and athletes, the thermal constraints in which training and competitions take place are much less considered, even though taking them into account is essential to perform without risk to health. The study of these constraints on psychological functioning is therefore a major issue. In this first part of the interview, Drs. Coudevylle, Collado and Sinnapah discuss the negative impact of the hot climate on psychological functioning (perceptions, cognition, affects) as well as on the associated risk of injury or accident.