In-season training load quantification of a top elite European soccer male team

• Author(s): Oliveira, Rafael Franco Soares
• Date: 2020
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/10297
• Origin: uBibliorum
• Subject(s): Futebol - Treino desportivo - Carga de treino; Futebol - Treino desportivo - Periodização
• Document Type: Doctoral thesis
• Language: English
• Contributor(s): uBibliorum; Marques, Mário António Cardoso; Brito, João Paulo Reis Gonçalves Moreira de

Description

The higher level of competitiveness in soccer lead coaches to a better training load management in order to avoid accumulative fatigue, to keep the best performance possible of their team and, consequently, to prepare the team to win the game. Thus, it is relevant to quantify training load applied to the players to get better the control and monitoring of the team as well as to get knowledge about the periodization applied. Therefore, the general aim of this thesis was to quantify external and internal training load during in-season 2015-2016 from a top elite European soccer male team. For the accomplishment of this purpose, the following sequence was used: (i) literature review of the current subject; (ii) the study of training load quantification during in-season; (iii) the study of training load quantification of one, two and three games week. The main conclusions were: (i) there were minor changes across the in-season period for the internal and external training load variables used; (ii) there was a decrease of training load until the day prior to the match for all variables; (iii) external training load was reduced from the following day of the match until the day prior to the match, however internal training load variables does not reveal the same pattern; (iv) training load applied in weeks with different number of matches seems similar. This thesis allows to obtain references about the periodization pattern observed across a full competitive season and allows generate reference values for elite players that can be considered for the coaches in the control and monitoring of the training load.