In the past decades, much research has examined the negative effects of stressors on the performance of athletes. However, according to evolutionary biology, organisms may exhibit growth under stress, a phenomenon called antifragility. For both coaches and their athletes, a key question is how to design training conditions to help athletes develop the kinds of physical, physiological, and behavioral adaptations underlying antifragility. An answer to this important question requires a better understanding of how individual athletes respond to stress or loads in the context of relevant sports tasks. In order to contribute to such understanding, the present study leverages a theoretical and methodological approach to generate individualized load-response profiles in the context of a climbing task. Climbers (n = 37) were asked to complete different bouldering (climbing) routes with increasing loading (i.e. difficulty). We quantified the behavioral responses of each individual athlete by mathematically combining two measures obtained for each route: (a) maximal performance (i.e. the percentage of the route that was completed) and (b) number of attempts required to achieve maximal performance. We mapped this composite response variable as a function of route difficulty. This procedure resulted in load-response curves that captured each athlete's adaptability to stress, termed phenotypic plasticity (PP), specifically operationalized as the area under the generated curves. The results indicate individual load-response profiles (and by extension PP) for athletes who perform at similar maximum levels. We discuss how these profiles might be used by coaches to systematically select stress loads that may be ideally featured in performance training.

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A pilot study of Safety First: Real Drug Education for Teens showed significant results pre to post curriculum with high school freshmen. Negative outcomes of drug education are linked to a failure to engage students because of developmentally inappropriate materials that include activities that have no relevance to real experiences of young people. The few harm reduction studies showed increased student drug related knowledge. Students were less likely to consume substances, and less likely to consume to harmful levels. More studies are necessary to evidence harm reduction efficacy in the classroom. The goal of this study was to measure harm reduction knowledge and behaviors, including drug policy advocacy, before and after Safety First. Data were analyzed using McNemar’s test, ANOVA, linear regression, t-tests and thematic coding. Survey results, corroborated by the qualitative findings, showed a significant increase (p < .05) in high school freshmen harm reduction knowledge and behaviors in relationship to substance use pre to post Safety First. This increase related to a decrease in overall substance use. Harm reduction is often perceived as a controversial approach to substance use. These findings have implications for further study of what could be a promising harm reduction-based substance use intervention with teens.

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