Quantifying Offense and Defense Workloads in Professional Rugby Union.

Purpose: Rugby union is a contact team sport demanding high levels of physical capacity, and understanding the match workloads can be useful to inform training. In this study, the factors influencing locomotion and contact workloads for offensive and defensive ball-in-play periods are quantified.

Methods: Locomotion and contact metrics were collected from global positioning system units and videos for 31 professional players of a Super Rugby team across 14 games in the 2021 season.

The Acute and Longer-Term Effects of Cold Water Immersion in Highly-Trained Volleyball Athletes During an Intense Training Block.

The use of cold water immersion (CWI) as a recovery strategy following exercise has drawn mixed findings over the last few decades. The purpose of the current study was two-fold; (1) to determine the acute effects of CWI within the training week, and (2) to investigate the longer-term effects of CWI over a 16-day period. In a randomized, controlled trial, 13 national-level volleyball athletes were allocated to two groups, an experimental (CWI, = 7) and a control group ( = 6) during a 3-week national training camp.

An examination of the jump-and-lift factors influencing the time to reach peak catch height during a Rugby Union lineout.

The goal of an offensive Rugby Union lineout is to throw the ball in a manner that allows your team to maintain possession. Typically, the player catching the ball jumps and is lifted upwards by two teammates, reaching above the opposing player who is competing for the ball also. Despite various beliefs regarding the importance of the jumper's mass and attempted jump height, and lifters' magnitude and point of force application, there is negligible published data on the topic.

Fatigue and Recovery in Rugby: A Review.

The physical demands and combative nature of rugby lead to notable levels of muscle damage. In professional rugby, athletes only have a limited timeframe to recover following training sessions and competition. Through the implementation of recovery strategies, sport scientists, practitioners and coaches have sought to reduce the effect of fatigue and allow athletes to recover faster.

Variability and predictability of finals times of elite rowers.

Purpose: Little is known about the competitive performance characteristics of elite rowers. We report here analyses of performance times for finalists in world-class regattas from 1999 to 2009.

Methods: The data were official race times for the 10 men's and 7 women's single and crewed boat classes, each with ∼ 200-300 different boats competing in 1-33 of the 46 regattas at 18 venues.