Physical fitness and external load in icehockey and football An exploration of the relationships between physical test performance and external training and match load in highly trained players

Abstract

Player monitoring has become an indispensable part of team sports. Modern day player monitoring typically includes regular physical performance testing and utilization of wearable tacking systems. Contrasting to physical performance testing, wearable tracking systems have emerged over the latest two decades, assisting in objectively quantifying the external training and match load at both the team- and individual player level. External training and match load refers to the objective work completed by the player, with total-, high- and sprint intensity running distance/efforts, accelerations, decelerations and “overall workload” being some of the typical variables reported. Monitoring data can assist as valuable tools to enhance training practices and optimize competitive performance preparations. With the inconvenience of performing physical performance testing during the competitive periods, such testing is typically limited to the pre-season or similar periods, such as international breaks, with lower match activity. With external training and match load data being monitored on a daily basis, the associated data has been suggested as a potential marker of players fitness. Despite the wide application of wearable tracking systems, research investigating the relationships between physical fitness and measures of external load remains scarce. While wearable tracking systems have been more commonly used, research has been focused on outdoor field sports, due to the necessity of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) signals. However, recent technological development has made indoor local positioning systems (LPS) available, albeit with a comparable scarcity of research investigating its application in indoor sports….