To determine the change in mechanical properties of sprinting performance across an 8-week off-season period in professional rugby league players.
Design: Repeated measuresMethods: Twenty-six professional rugby league players from a single rugby league team competing in Super League completed two assessments of linear sprint performance during final week of the season and second week of preseason. Linear split times were used to model the horizontal force-velocity profile and determine theoretical maximal force (F0), velocity (V0) and power (Pmax).
Results:Our result indicated moderate-to-large increases in split times at each distance across the off-season period (ES = 0.86 to 1.24; most likely), indicative of a reduced sprinting ability. Furthermore, small reductions in F0 (ES -0.34 to -0.57; likely to very likely) were observed, whilst the reduction in V0 (ES = -0.81; most likely) and Pmax (ES = -0.62 to -1.03; most likely) were considered moderate in magnitude.
Conclusions:An 8-week off-season period elicited negative changes in linear sprint times and the horizontal force-velocity profile of professional rugby league players. Such findings might have implications for preseason training loads and therefore, the off-season period requires careful consideration by practitioners and clinicians with regards to content and monitoring.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.