The effects of human competition on testosterone (T) and cortisol (C) levels have been studied for several researchers. On the whole, while high T levels encourage human social-seeking behaviours, C plays an important role in response to a physical and psychological challenge mobilizing glucose reserves into skeletal muscle. The biosocial model is one of the most important hypotheses to interpret the relationship between T and social competition. According to this model, face to face competitions elicit important outcome dependent hormonal changes; victor men increase T levels and consequently enhance their trend to facing new social status threats. In contrast, defeated men drop significantly after losing and inhibit their status-seeking beside negative moods and high postgame C levels. To our knowledge, in rackets sports many few papers has been published analysing the hormonal response patterns; foreground two studies in men doubles tennis and men singles badminton players that results fit to biosocial hypotheses of status. Here, we present a study in 18 elite men double players (from Europe, Oceania and Asia) randomly chosen from the XXIII Spanish International Badminton Tournament with following characteristics (mean ± SD): age 21.51 ± 3,22 years; BMI 22.80 ±1.49 kg/m2 and 9.83 ±2.79 years in official competitions. Participants were not talking drugs, medication, no endocrine disorders before or during the process and they were familiarized with sampling. Saliva samples (2-4 ml) were taken in plastics tubes 45 minutes before player was called to the court and 45 minutes after the match. CSAI-2 (Martens et al., 1990) was also used to estimate pregame cognitive and somatic anxiety and self-confidence. Lactate blood concentrations in the first 60 s. postgame and rating of perceived exertion (RPE; Borg, 1982) was also taken to estimate the effort to win or lose the match. Pregame and postgame testosterone levels are shown in Fig. 1A. According to biosocial model, results (Wilcoxon signed rank test) showed that testosterone levels increase after winning (z = -2.366, p = .018) and drop after losing (z = -2.934, p = .003) in doubles men badminton players. The mean C salivary concentrations before and after the contents are shown in Fig. 1B. In contrast, C decrease after win a match (-23.90 %, z = -2.366, p = .018) and were significantly higher in defeated men (128.28%, z = -2.934, p = .003). Pregame psychological measures (CSAI-2 factors) and postgame lactate concentrations showed no differences between groups, nevertheless RPE was higher in losers (z = -3.303, p = .001). In conclusion, T response patterns to men doubles badminton competition are congruent with the outcome, according to the biosocial hypotheses of status. Postgame C levels were also related with outcome, although the literature suggest a relationship between physical effort and C rises, the present study showed no differences between victor and defeated men in postgame lactate concentrations, but RPE (highly modulated by psychological factors) showed greater score after losing, probably in response to frustration (as argued Jimenez et al., 2012).
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