FSI Selected Publications of the Week

1. Vertical Force-velocity Profiling and Relationship to Sprinting in Elite Female Soccer Players.
Manson SA, Low C, Legg H, Patterson SD, Meylan C.

Department for Physical Performance, Canadian Soccer Association, Ottawa, Canada.

39 international female soccer players performed 40-m sprints, maximal countermovement jumps and loaded squat jumps at increasing loads to determine individual force-velocity profiles. Counter movement jump and squat jump performance demonstrated moderate to large correlation with acceleration and maximal sprint speed.

Int J Sports Med. 2021 Feb 18. doi: 10.1055/a-1345-8917. Online ahead of print.

2. Hamstring Injury Prevention for Elite Soccer Players: A Real-World Prevention Program Showing the Effect of Players’ Compliance on the Outcome.
Chebbi S, Chamari K, Van Dyk N, Gabbett T, Tabben M.

Aspetar Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Hospital, Doha, Qatar.

In a professional team, for 3 seasons a noncompulsory Nordic Hamstrings Exercise (NHE) program was implemented. Players were split in low-, moderate-, and high-attendance groups to the sessions. The hamstrings injury rate for the team was 0.95 injury/1000 hour of exposure. A nonstatistically significant lower risk of hamstring injury was observed in the high-attendance group, and the greatest risk was observed in the low-attendance group (odds ratio 1.77).

J Strength Cond Res. 2020 Feb 14. doi: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000003505. Online ahead of print.

3. Does aerobic performance define match running performance among professional soccer players? A position-specific analysis.
Modric T, Versic S, Sekulic D.

Faculty of Kinesiology, University of Split , and HNK Hajduk Split, Croatia.

Aerobic performance was tested at the beginning of the season in laboratory settings, and match-running performance was measured by a global positioning system over a competitive half-season for a total of 82 match performances in professional players from Croatia, clustered as central player (n = 57) and side player (n = 25) performances. For side players, the anaerobic threshold was correlated with high-speed and sprint running distance. For central players, the aerobic threshold was correlated with the total distance covered, and low-intensity running distance.

Res Sports Med. 2021 Feb 14:1-13. doi: 10.1080/15438627.2021.1888107. Online ahead of print.

4. Training Load and Its Role in Injury Prevention, Part 2: Conceptual and Methodologic Pitfalls.
Impellizzeri FM, McCall A, Ward P, Bornn L, Coutts AJ.

Faculty of Health, Human Performance Research Centre and School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation, University of Technology Sydney, Australia.

This clinical commentary highlights the conceptual and methodologic pitfalls evident in current training-load-injury research, relating to (1) measure of exposures, (2) pitfalls of using ratios, (3) training-load measures, (4) time windows, (5) discretization and reference category, (6) injury definitions, (7) unclear analyses, (8) sample size and generalizability, (9) missing data, and (10) standards and quality of reporting. Given these pitfalls, training-load measures cannot tell us whether their variations are increasing or decreasing the injury risk, and the authors recommend that practitioners still rely on their expert knowledge and experience.

J Athl Train. 2020 Sep 1;55(9):893-901. doi: 10.4085/1062-6050-501-19.