Hamstring strain injuries (HSI) are one of the most frequent time-loss injuries in sprint-based sports. They account for 19% of all injuries in football and are reported to result in an economic burden of approximately 90, 367€ per 1000h (Ekstrand et al., 2022; Pulici et al., 2023). If we look at data from current research, we can see that more than 50% of HSI occur during sprint running, during either maximal velocity running or acceleration scenarios (Figure 1) (Aiello et al., 2023; Gronwald et al., 2022; Kerin et al., 2022). Figure 1 | Hamstring injury mechanisms in football and rugby coho ..read more

A football movement misconception: players do not move like “robots” or “pac-man“ Currently there is a lack of sports specificity with traditional testing and training methods for movement patterns adopted in soccer. By this, some tasks and exercises lack shared specificity from a kinematic, kinematic, and even contextual perspective. Commonly, movements and assessments are typically linear, single plane movements. Movement performance is, among others, angle and vector-dependent, which determines ankle, knee, and hip joint contribution (Kotsifaki et al., 2021); if you frequently move with hor ..read more

Overview Plyometric is a combination of Greek words that literally means to increase measurement (plio = more; metric = measure), and plyometric training (PT) are methods which involves the stretch shortening cycle (SSC). The SSC is a muscle action that involves the combination a rapid eccentric muscle action (pre-stretch / lengthening) immediately followed by a rapid concentric muscle action (shortening) of the same muscle (Goodwin and Jeffreys, 2016; Potach and Chu, 2016). This mechanism subsequently increases concentric force production, power, and efficiency (compared to isolated concentri ..read more

Assessments of agility, essentially requires tests of change of direction and/ or manoeuvrability in response to stimuli, whereby the athlete’s ‘perceptual-cognitive’ abilities along with their ability to move quickly (perceptual-motor ability) are evaluated. Whilst calls to move away from assessing pre-planned COD tests and incorporating true agility tests have been made (Young et al., 2021), as highlighted in the previous BLOG, limited options are currently available to do this, and such options have practical limitations making it difficult for practitioners to implement in the field. This ..read more

Readers of our posts will be well-versed by now in the multi-directional requirements of team sport athletes. Between our contributors, we have extensively covered topics that have highlighted the critical need to monitor deceleration capablities,  differentiate  between change of direction and agility assessments, or understand the biomechanical distinctions of curved sprinting to inform bespoke training methods. These have typically been standalone pieces, and rightly so, given the detail needed to sythensise relevant but naunced information into practical application. With that sa ..read more

In my previous two blogs I discussed the intricacies of horizontal deceleration and why it is the most mechanically demanding task in multi-directional sports. Despite its clear importance to sports performance and injury-risk reduction I often highlight how overlooked and misunderstood this quality has been in comparison to other speed qualities such as horizontal acceleration and maximal velocity sprint running. One of the main reasons for this has been due to the difficulty to reliably assess horizontal deceleration in an applied field-based environment in comparison to horizontal accelerat ..read more

Introduction Linear sprinting is an important action in match deciding events of field-based sports such as soccer. However, time-motion studies in soccer reveal that not all sprints are linear (Caldbeck, 2019; Fitzpatrick et al., 2019) and that many are curvilinear with varying radii (Brice et al., 2004). Whilst far less research has been conducted on curvilinear sprinting compared to linear, many studies mainly from an athletics track perspective reveal that curvilinear sprint running evokes biomechanical asymmetries between limbs outside of that typically observed between limbs whilst runni ..read more

Overview Fitness testing (i.e., testing the components of fitness related to sports performance and injury) helps drive physical preparation strategies to improve performance and mitigate injury risk (McGuigan, 2017). Fitness testing forms a key component of the need’s analysis and the assessment of the individual, while understanding the physical demands and key performance indicators, helps drives fitness testing selection (McMahon et al., 2018). As summarised in Figure 1 below, fitness testing plays an integral role in identifying strengths and weaknesses of athletes which help inform exerc ..read more

MDS encompasses various sub-components, including perceptual factors, decision-making, and change of direction speed. Breaking down these components helps in identifying the specific cognitive, biomechanical, technical, and physical requirements of each task, enabling targeted training methods. Physical qualities like reactive strength, rate of force development (RFD), and peak force (PF) are crucial for achieving high and rapid braking and propulsive impulse, which are essential in changing direction, sprinting, and decelerating during MDS actions. These qualities underpin key MDS components ..read more

To ensure optimal preparation of athletes competing in multi-directional sports, an essential starting point is to gain a thorough understanding of the demands an athlete may be exposed to during competitive match play. Subsequently, practitioners may ‘reverse engineer’ competition requirements through the design of training approaches that most optimally prepare athletes for these specific demands. This has been referred to as reverse engineering (Turner et al., 2022). With the evolution of multi-directional speed sports requiring players to perform more frequent accelerations and high-speed ..read more