Survey of the current practices of German football academies towards biological maturation assessment

ABSTRACT

Objectives

This study aimed to examine the importance assigned to assessing and considering biological maturation in thematic areas of player development and provide an overview of current practices in German football academies regarding its consideration in training and competition.

Methods

An online survey was sent to 56 elite German football academies. A total of 46 responded to the questionnaire (82% response rate). Six participants provided incomplete information resulting in a total of 40 completed surveys in the period from March to May 2022.

Results

Only 20 of participants regularly carried out maturation assessments, despite 95% recognizing its importance for load management, 90% for player development, and 85% for injury prevention. There was no consistent approach to modifying training and competition formats based on maturity status, with a primary focus on gym-based sessions for load management.

Conclusion

The survey results highlight limited implementation of maturation assessment and training modification based on maturity status in German elite youth football academies. Despite recognizing the importance of load monitoring, reporting to parents, and long-term player development in considering biological maturation, practices are not widespread. The predominant use of the maturity offset method suggests an opportunity to improve accuracy by exploring alternative measurement methods and increasing assessment frequency. Moreover, a lack of established procedures for incorporating maturity status into training and competition exists, hindering comprehensive consideration of biological maturation and injury risk prevention. Further research is needed to understand the reasons for inconsistent approaches in maturation assessment and load modification during training and competition.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth
• football
• maturation
• monitoring
• prevention

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all participants for taking the time to complete the survey, the practitioners who helped assess content validity of the survey, and Dr. Jamie Salter and Dr. Sean Cummings, for their support throughout the project. We acknowledge Hadley Wickham for the development of the dplyr package, as well as Jason Bryer and Kim Speerschneider for their contributions to the likert package. Thank you for your interest and participation in the survey! As a follow-up to the survey, we would like to conduct further interviews on the topic - application of biological maturity. We would be pleased if you would also be willing to be available for this. If you are interested, please enter your name and email address in the fields below. We will contact you at a later date and thank you in advance for your willingness. This question is only used to store contact information of a participant (e.g. an email address) separately from the other information. With this question you avoid the collection of personal data. In the case of e-mail addresses, no indication of the interview will be stored (e.g. neither completeness, nor which questionnaire was completed).

Disclosure statement

The author Lukas Arenas has worked as head strength and conditioning coach in a German youth academy. Tim Meyer is chairman of the German FA's (DFB) and UEFA's medical committee.

Data available on request from the author

The original data and German survey that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [LA], upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the German youth academy.