Interesting thoughts and observations Onspeed – one of the things in sport that we do know is – there are few hard and fast rules!
WRT cortisol in my humble opinion there is alot of misinformation out there, such that it is a solely catabolic hormone (and also that we need to resort to various supplements to suppress it). Short term cortisol is useful and very necessary, longer term is detrimental – but just as dangerous is long term absence of it or failure to produce it.
(To be honest this is where I could go on a bit about cortisol and the inaccuracies of some claims)
Your obsrevations with regard to sports such as rowing is very accurate from my limited ‘experiences’
With regard to personality I have tried to do some interesting research to try and profile athletes (as for me the key for team sports is in individulisation of protocols) especially with regard to training types and recovery protocols as not everyone responds to the same stimulii.
Of course we are not all truly great artists like Ashley so the less gifted of us such as myself attempt to resort to science!
This has led me to trying to group or evaluate personalities.
Now HOW you look at it is interesting also – do you look at hormones, brain chemistry or physiological evidence? Regardless I feel it’s one of the difference between good and average coaches.
Do you think that perhaps the reason for your big T response in boxers may be more a reflection of the influence of other hormones (specifically our friend cortisol) rather than Test?