Influence of Team's Rank on Soccer Referees' External and Internal Match Loads During Official Matches

Castillo, D, Castagna, C, Cámara, J, Iturricastillo, A, and Yanci, J. Influence of team's rank on soccer referees' external and internal match loads during official matches. J Strength Cond Res 32(6): 1715–1722, 2018—The aim was to examine the external and the internal match loads (ML) of field referees (FRs) attending teams of different ranking during championship matches. Twenty FR who officiated in 30 official soccer matches (30 observations) participated in our study. The criteria for allocating the soccer referees' ML results were based on the teams' final league positions as follows: matches performed by Top 10 teams (TOP10), matches performed by bottom 10 teams (BOT10), and matches played among TOP10 and BOT10 teams (MIXED). External (match activities, accelerations [Acc], and decelerations [Dec]) and internal MLs (Edwards' heart rate [HR]-derived training impulse [TRIMPEDW], HRmean expressed as a percentage of HRpeak [%HRpeak], and differentiated rating of perceived exertion [dRPE]) were recorded. The main results showed that FR, who officiated TOP10 matches, covered more distance at a low walking speed (
Source: Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research - Category: Sports Medicine Tags: Original Research Source Type: research