Dr Xanne Janse De Jonge

Xanne completed her "doctorandus" studies (Bachelor's & Master's) in Human Movement Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in 1995. Her major was Exercise Physiology and as part of her studies she conducted a research project at the University of Sydney. Xanne spent the next few years travelling back and forth between Sydney and Amsterdam on research awards and fellowships. She settled permanently in Australia in 1998 and completed her PhD on the menstrual cycle and exercise performance at the University of Sydney in 2002. She then worked as an Exercise Physiologist in musculo-skeletal rehabilitation, as a sports facility coordinator and as a lecturer at the University of Western Sydney. Since 2006 Xanne has been a lecturer in Exercise & Sport Science at the University of Newcastle. Besides her research interest in exercise performance in females, Xanne has also been collaborating on applied sport science research with the Central Coast Mariners FC and at the VU University Amsterdam. Xanne is the chair of the Sport Science Advisory Committee of the Judo Federation of Australia and has established research links with Podiatry focusing on core stability training.

Research Expertise
One of the main areas of my research so far has been the effects of the menstrual cycle on exercise performance. Throughout ovulatory menstrual cycles women are exposed to continuously changing female steroid hormone profiles. The physiological changes accompanying these hormone fluctuations may affect exercise performance. As an acknowledgement of my expertise in this area I was invited to write a review on this topic for Sports Medicine. Research into the effect of the menstrual cycle on exercise has grown significantly since publication of my review. It signifies an important step in the catch up in the area of female exercise physiology. Areas of focus in my menstrual cycle research are temperature regulation, endurance performance, aerobic performance and muscle function. I am also interested in assessing if the "trainability" of females is affected by the fluctuations in female steroid hormones. My research on the influence of the menstrual cycle phase on skeletal muscle characteristics was published in the Journal of Physiology. This research addressed methodological problems identified in earlier work and provided clarification on an ambiguous topic. The research investigated muscle function during three phases of the menstrual cycle (early follicular, late follicular and mid luteal) as identified by significantly different concentrations of oestrogen and progesterone. Muscle function was measured both through voluntary muscle contractions and through the use of electrical stimulation. The results of this study suggest that the fluctuations in female reproductive hormones throughout the menstrual cycle do not affect muscle strength, fatiguability and contractile properties. My other areas of research are described below in the section "Collaboration".


Collaborations
A strong research focus is the time-motion analysis of soccer through our link with the Central Coast Mariners Football Club. GPS technology is used to record position, velocity and acceleration during matches and training. The advantage of GPS technology is that it is more accurate than previous techniques and is able to record position and velocity for every second of a match and/or training session. The Exercise & Sport Science staff and research students are tackling the challenge of processing and analysing the enormous amount of data and generating a useful summary of the player's performance. This information is useful because it allows the estimation of the physiological demands of playing soccer. It also provides useful information to coaches that can be used to design optimal training regimes. In 2010 Xanne spend 5 months at the VU University Amsterdam collaborating on research on methods of training monitoring during team sports, in particular soccer. There are many similarities between the research with the Central Coast Mariners and that conducted at the VU University Amsterdam. Xanne's research visit to Amsterdam is likely to result in further collaboration with the VU University Amsterdam. At the Chair of the Sport Science Advisory Committee of the Judo Federation of Australia, Xanne is involved in applied sport science research in judo focusing on the national team. Xanne has established links with Podiatry in a project investigating the effects of foot orthoses and lumbopelvic stabilising exercises on pain and disability in people with low back pain.