The concept of recovery strategies includes various ways to achieve a state of well-being, prevent underrecovery syndromes from occurring and re-establish pre-performance states. A systematic application of individualised relaxation techniques is one of those. Following a counterbalanced cross-over design, 27 sport science students (age 25.22 ± 1.08 years; sports participation 8.08 ± 3.92 h/week) were randomly assigned to series of progressive muscle relaxation, systematic breathing, power nap, yoga, and a control condition. Once a week, over the course of five weeks, their repeated sprint ability was tested. Tests (6 sprints of 4 s each with 20 s breaks between them) were executed on a non-motorised treadmill twice during that day intermitted by 25 min breaks. RM-ANOVA revealed significant interaction effects between the relaxation conditions and the two sprint sessions with regard to average maximum speed over all six sprints, F(4,96) = 4.06, P = 0.004, [Formula: see text] = 0.15. Post-hoc tests indicated that after systematic breathing interventions, F(1,24) = 5.02, P = 0.033, [Formula: see text] = 0.18, participants performed significantly better compared to control sessions. As the focus of this study lied on basic mechanisms of relaxation techniques in sports, this randomised controlled trial provides us with distinct knowledge on their effects, i.e., systematic breathing led to better performances, and therefore, seems to be a suited relaxation method during high-intensity training.

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The aim of the study was to investigate the effects of wearing various levels of compression following repeated and exhausting sprint exercise on variables related to recovery. Twelve well-trained handball players performed three sessions of repeated and exhausting sprint exercise (30 × 30m). Directly after each session the participants wore tights extending from below the hip to the foot with either 0, 10, or 25 mm Hg of compression onto the thigh and calf muscles. 48 h after the training session all participants performed 5 × 30m sprints and counter movement jumps. Before, directly after, 24 h, and 48 h after the training session venous blood samples were drawn for the determination of creatine kinase (CK), urea, C-reactive protein (CRP). At the same time points, subjective ratings of the Acute Recovery and Stress Scale (ARSS) questionnaires were obtained. The results for plasma concentrations of CK and urea showed 'likely' to 'very, very likely' beneficial effects for compression garments exerting 10 mm Hg of compression (p = 0.06-1.0). With regard to sprint and jump performance no differences were evident between 0, 10, and 25 mm Hg (p = 0.07-1.0). In addition, subjective scores from the ARSS did not differ between conditions over time (p > 0.05). We conclude that the application of 10 mm Hg leg compression compared to 0 and 25 mm Hg of compression during 48 h of recovery from repeated and exhausting sprints lowered the plasma concentrations of CK and urea with no improvements in recovery for performance.

In professional soccer, players, coaches, and researchers alike recognize the importance of cognitive skills. Research addressing the relevance of cognitive skills has been based on the cognitive component skills approach (i.e., general cognitive processes) or the expert performance approach (i.e., sport-specific cognitive processes). Our project aimed to combine the strengths of both approaches to develop and validate cognitive tasks measuring inhibition and cognitive flexibility in a soccer-specific setting with a soccer-specific motor response. In the main study 77 elite youth soccer players completed a computerized version of the standard flanker and number–letter tasks as well as flanker and number–letter tasks requiring a soccer-specific motor response (i.e., pass) in a soccer-specific setting (i.e., the SoccerBot360). Results show good reliability for both tasks. For the SoccerBot360 number–letter task, switch effects for response times and accuracy and acceptable convergent validity were shown. A flanker effect for response time but not accuracy was apparent. Due to no acceptable convergent validity, the flanker task was revised (i.e., adaptation of stimuli) and 63 adult soccer players participated in a follow-up validation study in the SoccerBot100. The revised flanker task showed the flanker effect for response time, but not for accuracy. However, acceptable convergent validity for response time was present. Thus, the soccer-specific number–letter and to some extent the soccer-specific flanker task show potential to be used as a valid cognitive diagnostic tool by soccer clubs.