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ASSOCIATIONS BETWEEN GPS-DERIVED TRAINING METRICS AND SUBJECTIVE READINESS RATINGS IN NCAA FEMALE SOCCER PLAYERS

A Ehlert

Abstract

Alex Ehlert. North Carolina Wesleyan College, Rocky Mount, NC.

BACKGROUND: Global positioning system (GPS) is commonly used to measure workloads during soccer training sessions. This is often accompanied by subjective “readiness ratings” (e.g., ratings of stress, fatigue, sleep quality, etc.) to provide information about the physical and psychological status of each athlete across a training period or season. There is currently little research on the associations between readiness ratings and training metrics in NCAA female soccer athletes. The purpose of this study was to evaluate within-individual associations between same-day pairings of subjective readiness ratings (soreness, stress, mood, sleep quality and duration) and GPS-derived training metrics (total distance covered, distance covered while sprinting, number of sprints, top and mean sprint speed) collected during training sessions across a six-month period. METHODS: GPS training data and subjective readiness ratings that were collected by a NCAA Division III female soccer team was analyzed retrospectively for this study. An athlete’s data was included in the analysis if they had multiple instances where subjective readiness ratings and GPS training metrics were collected on the same day. Repeated measures correlation coefficients (rrm) were calculated to quantify within-individual associations between same-day readiness ratings and training metrics over time. RESULTS: Data from 11 athletes were included in the analysis, with each athlete providing an average of 8.7 ± 3.6 pairings of same-day readiness ratings and GPS training data. Ratings of stress had statistically significant negative correlations with total distance covered (rrm = -0.29, p = 0.006), distance covered while sprinting (rrm = -0.31, p = 0.004), number of sprints performed (rrm = -0.25, p = 0.021), top speed reached while sprinting (rrm = -0.35, p < 0.001) and mean speed during sprints (rrm = -0.27, p = 0.011). Ratings of soreness had statistically significant negative correlations with distance covered while sprinting (rrm = -0.24, p = 0.027), but not with any other GPS metric. There were no statistically significant correlations between ratings of sleep duration, sleep quality, or mood with any GPS metric (p > 0.05 for all). CONCLUSION: The results of this analysis suggest that higher ratings of stress and soreness are associated with lower running performance during training sessions in NCAA Division III female soccer players.

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