Elite North American soccer performance in thermally challenging environments: An explorative approach to tracking outcomes

ABSTRACT

Aims

The physiologic challenges related to performances in hot conditions calls for dedicated consideration when planning athlete training, although complete amelioration of the effects of heat may not be possible. We aimed to quantify within-subject correlations between different measures of environmental temperature and performance changes over multiple elite soccer competitions.

Methods

Thirty-seven elite male soccer players (age: 26 ± 3.4 years, height: 171 ± 2 cm, body mass: 78 ± 7.1 kg) competed in North America over four seasons (range: 3 to 98 matches). Players wore global positioning system devices during games and reported differential-RPE immediately post game. Temperatures at kick-off, week average temperature, the difference between game-day and week average (Diff_Temp), and heat index at kick-off were obtained. Within-player correlations were calculated using general linear models to quantify associations between fluctuations in temperature measures and physical and perceived outputs.

Results

Correlations between total distance and the various temperature measures were trivial to small (range: −0.08 to 0.13, p=<0.001–0.02). Small negative correlations were found between all temperature measures except Diff_Temp and high-speed running (HSR) (range: −0.17 to −0.14, p=<0.001). Most correlations between differential-RPE and temperature measures were trivial to small and not significant (r = 0.06 to 0.18 p = 0.03–0.92) although breathlessness-RPE and heat index showed a small significant association (P = 0.018)

Conclusion

Decrements in HSR appear to be associated with increased environmental temperature, however, these associations are small in magnitude.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental
• Football
• temperature
• differential rate of perceived exertion
• match
• heat index

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the numerous athletes and practitioners tirelessly working in pursuit of high performance for detailing and competing in such challenging environments. Without your dedication and efforts, we would still be stuck on the ground floor

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Ethics approval

Teesside University School of Health and Life Sciences Ethics Sub Committee (Study No 238/18)

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.