Match load affects perceived wellness significantly in elite women’s football during a competitive season

Abstract

Introduction: Women’s football has developed rapidly in Europe over the last decades, and the number of women playing football in Europe continues rising. Despite rising numbers and interest in women’s football, scientific research is still lacking. With players competing 50-80 per season, sufficient recovery and understanding women footballer’s internal response to match load is important to ensure optimal recovery and training strategies. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine how perceived wellness changes from matchday (MD) to matchday+1 (MD+1) and matchday+2 (MD+2), and whether internal match load and perceived wellness are correlated. Methods: 38 Norwegian elite women football players (23.31y ± 5.17) participated in this study. Prior to the study, all players signed a letter of consent. PMSys reporting system was used to monitor session rating of perceived exertion (sRPE) on MD, and perceived wellness on MD, MD+1, and MD+2. Perceived wellness and sRPE were collected during the entire 2020 season. Results: 4/5 perceived wellness subsets changed significantly from MD to MD+1 and MD+2. Fatigue, delayed onset muscular soreness (DOMS), sleep duration (SD) and sleep quality (SQ) decreased between 10 and 23% from MD to MD+1 and increased from MD+1 to MD+2 between 4-13%. All changes were found to be statistically significant (p<.001), expect for DOMS from MD+1 to MD+2 (p=.065). Furthermore, no significant changes were found in perceived stress between days (p=.441). Lastly, trivial to small negative and positive correlations were found between sRPE on MD and perceived wellness on MD+1 and MD+2. However, all correlations were statistically non-significant (p>.05), except for sRPE and fatigue on MD+1. Conclusion: Norwegian elite women footballers experienced significant changes post-match in all perceived wellness variables, except for stress. No significant relationship between sRPE on MD and perceived wellness on MD+1 and MD+2 was established, except for between sRPE and fatigue on MD+1.