Monitoring and Managing Fatigue in Basketball.

Toby Edwards,Tania Spiteri,G Gregory Haff,Benjamin Piggott,Joshua Bonhotal,Christopher Joyce

doi:10.3390/sports6010019

Toby Edwards, Tania Spiteri + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/sports6010019

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Abstract

The sport of basketball exposes athletes to frequent high intensity movements including sprinting, jumping, accelerations, decelerations and changes of direction during training and competition which can lead to acute and accumulated chronic fatigue. Fatigue may affect the ability of the athlete to perform over the course of a lengthy season. The ability of practitioners to quantify the workload and subsequent fatigue in basketball athletes in order to monitor and manage fatigue levels may be beneficial in maintaining high levels of performance and preventing unfavorable physical and physiological training adaptations. There is currently limited research quantifying training or competition workload outside of time motion analysis in basketball. In addition, systematic research investigating methods to monitor and manage athlete fatigue in basketball throughout a season is scarce. To effectively optimize and maintain peak training and playing performance throughout a basketball season, potential workload and fatigue monitoring strategies need to be discussed.

Highlights

Basketball is an intermittent, court-based team sport comprised of repeated high intensity movements such as change of direction, accelerations and decelerations interspersed with periods of low to moderate intensity activity [1]
A systematic review of 34 studies investigated whether resting heart rate (RHR) can be used to determine overreaching in athletes reported moderate increase in RHR after short (2 weeks) interventions [54]. These findings suggest that the use of RHR to monitor fatigue in basketball athletes may be beneficial during intensive training camps (
This may result in an accumulation of perceptual and/or performance fatigue which could lead to a decrease in playing performance

Summary

Introduction

Basketball is an intermittent, court-based team sport comprised of repeated high intensity movements such as change of direction, accelerations and decelerations interspersed with periods of low to moderate intensity activity [1]. Athletes perform regular maximal efforts during competition including extensive high intensity shuffling, sprinting and jumping [2,3]. 40 min games [1] Physiological traits such as blood lactate and heart rate responses to competition demands reveal athletes are competing at an average physiological intensity above lactate threshold and 85% maximum heart rate [1]. A professional National Basketball Association (NBA) season consists of 82 games played over six months. The high intensity movement demands and physiological stress on the athletes during competition may accumulate over the pre-season and competitive season and present as signs of fatigue leading to decreased performance output and/or injury [4]. Combining objective and subjective measures of workload and fatigue provides practitioners such as strength and conditioning coaches and sport scientists

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