(21) A comparison of external workload across field sports in women collegiate athletes

INTRODUCTION: Match demands of women collegiate field-sport athletes have been elucidated through quantification of external loads using positional monitoring technology. While knowledge gleaned from these systems has informed optimal training prescriptions and periodization strategies, soccer is disproportionately examined in the workload monitoring literature, leaving questions about match demands of other field-based invasion sports, such as lacrosse and field hockey.

Purpose: To compare external loads during match play across three women collegiate field sports and examine intra-sport differences in positional workload demands.

Methods: National Collegiate Athletic Association Division III women athletes participated from soccer (SOC, n=19), lacrosse (LAX, n=15), and field hockey (FH, n=14). Athletes wore global positioning system devices for all in-season games (i.e., SOC: n=13; LAX: n=19; FH: n=17). External load metrics included: total distance (TD), sprint distance (SD), sprint efforts (SE), accelerations, decelerations, Player Load (PL), Player Load per minute (PL/min), and top speed. Multivariate analyses of variance assessed differences in external load measures across sports and sport positions (p< 0.05). Only athletes who were classified as “starters” were included for analysis.

Results: SOC athletes covered greater TD (6868 ± 2490 m) and sustained higher PL (325 ± 104 AU) compared to FH (TD: 6093 ± 1678 m; PL: 270 ± 64 AU) and LAX (TD: 5363 ± 2257 m; PL: 272 ± 98 AU) (p < 0.001). Conversely, SOC athletes performed fewer SE (5 ± 3) and covered less SD (152 ± 101 m) compared to LAX (SE: 10 ± 6; SD: 311 ± 184 m) and FH (SE: 8 ± 6; SD: 239 ± 128 m) (p< 0.001). Table 1 displays differences in workload parameters stratified by sport and position. Significant differences in TD, SD, SE, accelerations, decelerations, PL, PL/min, and top speed were observed across sport-positions (p< 0.005).

Conclusions: Although SOC athletes achieved the greatest measure of workload volumes (i.e., TD, PL), LAX and FH athletes performed more bouts of high-intensity efforts (i.e., SE), and thus performed tasks at higher intensities relative to the volumes of workload recorded. Differences in positional demands across all three sports were observed for key volume and intensity metrics. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: Identification of external workload parameters enables practitioners to tailor training programs unique to each sport and position.

 


 

 



 

 

Acknowledgements: None