Determinant variables related to performance of professional bullfighters: A narrative review

Although bullfighting is not considered a sport, bullfighters require an optimal level of physical preparation to be able to face the difficult activity of fighting a brave bull. The usual approaches to the physical preparation of professional bullfightersare based on decontextualized training methods, or on the practice of sports modalities with positive transfer to bullfighting. However, the lack of analysis of the context of bullfighting, as well as the existence of few investigations that have analyzedthe psychophysiological variables and the movement time of professional bullfighters during the fight, causes the urgent need to generate a line of research that can solve these deficiencies. Objective:The main objective of this narrative review is to present the current relevant scien-tific literature on the variables that determine the performance of bullfighters, and thereby, begin to lay the foundations for a more scientific analysis of bullfighting.Method: A bibliographic search was carried out in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines and the PICO framework.Result: The results of this narrative review show the determining variables in the performance of professional bullfighters studied by the scientific community.Conclusion: knowledge of these variables will allow a more effective application of the princi-ples of training, particularly the principle of specificity, often neglected in the training of this art associated with physical activity.