Relationship of Pre-season Training Load With In-Season Biochemical Markers, Injuries and Performance in Professional Soccer Players

Conclusion: Our study showed that pre-season training load is not associated with overall team performance. This association is most likely multifactorial and other factors (e.g., technical and tactical level of the team, opponents, environment) may play an important role for the collective team performance. Our findings may help coaches to better prepare their athletes during pre-season. Introduction Physiological demands in soccer have changed over the past years. In fact, the intensity level of soccer matches has increased tremendously (Carling et al., 2010; Clemente et al., 2013). Today, the average percentage of the maximum heart rate in football training varies between 63.5% (Clemente and Nikolaidis, 2016) and 87.1% (Suarez Arrones et al., 2014) depending on the expertise level. To withstand the demands of training and competition, high physical fitness levels are needed to cope with the increasing number of matches during a season and to prevent injuries. Nédélec et al. (2012) postulated that players from the Spanish national squad played on average 70 games during the 2009–2010 in preparation of the 2010 World Cup. Recently, studies used new technologies [e.g., Global Positioning System (GPS)] to analyze activity of soccer players during training and competition and to deduce information on underlying physical demands using these data sets (Carling et al., 2005; Carling, 2010; Nikolaidis et al., 2018). For instance, Bradley et al. (2013) r...
Source: Frontiers in Physiology - Category: Physiology Source Type: research