Discussion
HEAT
This study investigated the effect of ice slurry ingestion before and between innings on body temperature and softball pitching performance in a hot environment. The present findings revealed that, in accordance with our principal hypothesis, ice slurry ingestion before and between innings decreased thermal (To our knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the influence of ice slurry ingestion on In the present study, neuromuscular function following ice slurry ingestion was assessed because reduced muscle strength was shown to be related to decreased ball velocity for softball pitchers [The present study demonstrated that ice slurry ingestion lowered HR by approximately 10 bpm compared with cool fluid ingestion, which is consistent with the findings of a reduction in HR by ingestion of 1.25 g·kgAlthough ice slurry ingestion improved thermal (The strength of the present study includes its methodological setting: (1) trials were conducted in an outdoor ground, (2) pitchers were heat acclimatized, and (3) cool fluid (10 °C) was employed for CON. Previous studies were conducted in the laboratory; however, environmental factors, including wind velocity [This study has three limitations. First, the type of participants employed in this study (i.e., amateur softball pitchers) did not allow for comparison with professional athletes. Regarding the pitching accuracy, a previous study has reported that the strike rates in 480 regular season Chinese Professional Baseball League games were approximately 50% [