Weekly Variations of Well-Being and Interactions with Training and Match Intensities: A Descriptive Case Study in Youth Male Soccer Players

Wearable Sensors and the Evaluation of Physiological Performance in Elite Field Hockey Players

Sports performance tracking has gained a lot of interest and widespread use in recent years, especially in elite and sub-elite sports. This makes it possible to improve the effectiveness of training, to calibrate and balance workloads according to real energy expenditure, and to reduce the likelihood of injuries due to excessive physical stress. In this context, the aim of this review was to map the scientific literature on wearable devices used in field hockey, evaluating their characteristics and the available evidence on their validity in measuring physiological and movement parameters. A systematic investigation was carried out by employing five electronic databases and search terms that incorporated field hockey, wearables, and performance analysis. Two independent reviewers conducted assessments of the 3401 titles and abstracts for inclusion, and at the end of the screening process, 102 full texts were analyzed. Lastly, a total of 23 research articles that specifically concentrated on field hockey were incorporated. The selected papers dealt with performance monitoring (6 papers), technical analysis and strategy game (6), injury prevention (1), and physiological measurements (10). To appraise the quality of the evaluations, the Oxford quality scoring system scale was employed. The extraction of information was carried out through the utilization of the participants, intervention, comparison, and outcomes (PICOS) format. The analysis encompassed research studies that implemented wearable devices during training and competitive events. Among elite field hockey competitions, GPS units were identified as the predominant wearable, followed by heart rate monitors. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) related to wearable devices showed reasonably high between-trial ICCs ranging from 0.77 to 0.99. The utilization of wearable devices in field hockey primarily centers around the measurement of player activity profiles and physiological demands. The presence of discrepancies in sampling rates and performance bands makes it arduous to draw comparisons between studies. Nevertheless, this analysis attested to the fact that wearable devices are being employed for diverse applications in the realm of field hockey.

Relationships between Internal Training Intensity and Well-Being Changes in Youth Football Players

The aim of this study was two-fold: (i) to analyze the variations of training intensity and well-being measures of youth football player over a 38 week period; and (ii) to test the relationships between training intensity and well-being variations throughout a youth football season. This study followed a longitudinal design, lasting 38 weeks. Twenty-five players (age: 15.0 ± 0.4 years) participated in this study. Participants were monitored daily to quantify the training intensity (TI) using the session-rate of perceived exertion (s-RPE) and its related indices: training monotony (TM), weekly training intensity (wTI), mean training intensity (mTI), and 5-day average (5d-AVG). A four-item questionnaire was collected daily to quantify the well-being status of each player. Fatigue, stress, delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), sleep quality, and the Hooper Index (HI) measures were analyzed. Kruskal-Wallis H test revealed significant differences for TM, mTI, wTI and 5d-AVG (H = 359.53, p = 0.001, η2 = 0.35; H = 414.97, p = 0.001, η2 = 0.41, H = 258.42, p = 0.001, η2 = 0.24 and H = 282.18, p = 0.001, η2 = 0.26). A positive large correlation was found between TM and sleep quality (r = 0.65, p = 0.05) and a negative large correlation between mTI and sleep quality (r = −0.69, p = 0.04). In conclusion, both TI and well-being measures present significant between-week differences at different periods of the season. Also, the variations of sleep quality seem to depend on TM and mTI variations across a youth football season.