Summary

The commentary raises points of analytic preference rather than methodological error. Across all outcomes, sensitivity analyses, both those presented by the commentators and those conducted using multilevel models, yield consistent conclusions in direction, magnitude and interpretation.

We therefore maintain the published analyses and the interpretive conclusions that follow from them, including the subgroup analyses. We reaffirm that our approach is consistent with current methodological guidance and avoids several common statistical pitfalls identified in recent evaluations of meta-analytic practice in sport science [15]. For clarification, we conducted a three-level meta-analysis, and the corresponding results along with the R code have been provided in the Supplementary file to ensure transparency and reproducibility. We are grateful for the scholarly engagement with our work, and we remain open to continuing the methodological conversation in scientific literature.