Variations of season workload and well-being status among professional roller-hockey players: Full season analysis

Abstract

The aims of this research were (i) to describe variations in the internal load and well-being between regular (one official match) and congested (two official matches) weeks in senior professional roller-hockey players and (ii) to analyse the variations of these determinants, within weeks, for an entire season. Ten professional roller-hockey players (29.3 ± 4.8 years; 178.3 ± 6.4 cm; 78.0 ± 3.9 kg) from the Portuguese 1st league division participated in this study. Perceptions of fatigue, stress, delayed onset muscle soreness, and quality of sleep were recorded, and the Hooper index (1–7) was constructed with the sum of the four subjective ratings. In addition, the rating of perceived exertion (RPE) was collected approximately 30 min after each training session using Borg's CR-10. The volume of training (in minutes) was also collected, and the session-RPE (RPE multiplied by training volume) was calculated. Among congested weeks, in MD-2 (two days before a match), players spend less time training (-20.7%; 90%CI: −22,5; −18,9) and have lower levels of RPE (-20.0%; 90%CI: −25,0; −14,7) and internal training load (−38.2%; 90%CI: -41,9; −34,4) when compared with normal weeks. Similar results were found in both congested and normal weeks regarding the training process of the days classified as MD-3 (three days before a match). After pooling data from the overall season, significant within-weeks differences among different dimensions of the training sessions were observed. Higher values of internal training load (ITL), RPE and volume, were consistently observed on MD-3 than on MD-2 and MD-1. Findings of well-being revealed no meaningful differences (trivial-to-small) between type of weeks. Professional roller-hockey athletes presented overall adjustments of the load based on the number of games and the number of training days across weeks.