Journal Article

Weekly Training External Load and Match Demands in Female Futsal Players

Travassos, Bruno, Riberio, João Nuno, Spyrou, Konstantinos, Alcaraz, Pedro E, Freitas, Tomás T

2025

Overview

While women's futsal has grown significantly in recent years, the weekly training external load and match demands in female futsal players remain underexplored in the literature (Lago-Fuentes, 2020; Armendáriz, 2024; Barreira, 2024). This study aimed to analyse the weekly training external load and match demands in female futsal players during the season. A retrospective descriptive study was designed. Training and match load data, including, acceleration (ACC), decelerations (DEC), and changes of direction (COD) (i.e., all the data was analysed per minute of the effective time), of eight female players (age: 24±4 years old, body mass: 59.9±6.9 kg, body fat: 24.7±4.1%), competing in the 2nd Division of Spain, were collected using an accelerometer device (model: Catapult S7 Vector; Catapult; Melbourne, Australia) during the season 2022-2023. Pre-season period, in-season microcycles without an official competition, and non-official games were excluded from the analysis. All the training and match sessions included warm-up, technical, passing, and finishing drills, small-, medium-, and large-sided futsal games, and physical conditioning training. Throughout the analysed period, players had one official game during the week (e.g., Saturday [N=51 observations] match day [MD]) at \"home\" or \"away\" and trained 3 times per week: Monday (+2 MD) (N=30 observations), Tuesday (-4 MD) (N=38 observations) and Thursday (-2 MD) (N=43 observations) and all the procedures were approved by the Local Ethics Committee with the registration number CE072008 and conducted according to the Declaration of Helsinki. A statistical package (Jamovi, version 1.8, 2021) and linear mixed model was used for the statistical analysis. Players performed significantly more ACC and COD (total and across all intensities) as well as total and low-intensity DEC actions on MD when compared to +2 MD (p=0.001). In addition, players performed significantly more ACC and COD (total and across all intensities) and total and low-intensity DEC on -4 (p=0.001) and -2 MD (p=0.004) when compared to +2 MD. Non-significant differences were found between MD and -4 MD, however, players performed significantly more total ACC (p=0.021) as well as total (p=0.014) and low-intensity (p=0.017) DEC on MD when compared to -2 MD. Lastly, player did more total DEC (p=0.17), and total (p=0.002) and low- (p=0.008) and high-intensity (p=0.001) COD on -4 MD when compared to -2 MD. In summary, MD, -4 and -2 MD had a significant higher external load when compared to +2 MD. Interestingly, MD did not have any difference with -4 MD, nevertheless when compared to -2 MD players did more ACC and DEC. Furthermore, -4 MD seems to have more DEC and COD when compared to -2 MD.

• Publisher: Edições Desafio Singular
• Subject: Females