Contextual Variation in External and Internal Workloads across the Competitive Season of a Collegiate Women's Soccer Team.

Lauren E Rentz,Jad Ramadan,Bobby G Rawls,Wesley J Gawel,Scott M Galster,William Guy Hornsby

doi:10.3390/sports9120165

Lauren E Rentz, Jad Ramadan + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/sports9120165

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Abstract

As sports technology has continued to develop, monitoring athlete workloads, performance, and recovery has demonstrated boundless benefits for athlete and team success. Specifically, technologies such as global positioning systems (GPS) and heart rate (HR) monitors have granted the opportunity to delve deeper into performance contributors, and how variations may exist based upon context. A team of NCAA Division I women’s soccer athletes were monitored during games throughout one competitive season. Individual athlete, positional groups, and team external and internal workloads were explored for differences based upon game location, opponent ranking, game result, and the final score differential. Game location and opponent ranking were found to have no effect on team-wide absolute or relative external workloads, whereas game result and score differential did. Internal workloads across the team tended to only vary by game half, independent of game context; however, the HR of defenders was determined to be higher during losses as compared to wins (p = 0.0256). Notably, the games that resulted in losses also represented the games with the fewest number of substitutions. These findings suggest high value in monitoring performance and workloads that are characteristic of varying, often multifaceted, contexts. It is hoped that this information can lead to more informed approaches to vital game-time and coaching decisions.

Highlights

Over the last two decades, the use of integrated, practitioner-driven sport science applications have grown exponentially
External workloads encompassing global positioning systems (GPS), local positioning system (LPS), and inertial data were captured using the Vector S7 device made by Catapult Sports (Catapult Sports, Melbourne, Australia), which were positioned on each athlete in the center of their upper back
The present study examined conditional variations in team and player workloads throughout a full season of conference play of an National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) collegiate women’s soccer team from a Power-Five Division

Summary

Introduction

Over the last two decades, the use of integrated, practitioner-driven sport science applications have grown exponentially. Within the global football community (or soccer as it is referred to in the United States and will be referred to ), athlete monitoring systems aimed at providing coaches and sport scientists a better “view” of their athletes’ current physiological state has become commonplace This better understanding of the work athletes have performed is especially sought out within the professional and higher-level club (international) or collegiate (USA) soccer domains. Foster [5] studied and utilized various strategies collecting subjective load scores (e.g., session rating of perceived exertion [RPE]) and/or objective load scores (e.g., heart rate, lactate) in an attempt to better understand the amount of work performed along with the athlete’s internal physiological response Strategies such as session RPE, a low-cost option that continues to be very useful for coaches and sport scientists interested in load monitoring [6,7]. With the advent of wearable technology in sport, load monitoring often

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