Date of Award

5-2017

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Kinesiology

First Advisor

Deborah VanLangen, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

John Foley, Ph.D.

Third Advisor

Peter M. McGinnis, Ph.D.

Abstract

Every sport has specific physical demands of the human body. The amount of physiological load that an athlete endures during a bout of exercise can be described as training load (TL). Accurate calculation of training loads within athletes is important when it comes to strength and power development, as well as injury prevention and monitoring fatigue. Common methods used to calculate training loads for athletes include rating of perceived exertion (RPE) based methods, heart rate (HR) based methods, rate of oxygen consumption (VO2) methods, and blood lactate methods. Specifically with NCAA male soccer athletes, HR based methods and RPE based methods are most prevalent. However, there has been conflicting research results when regarding the strength of the relationship between HR and RPE based methods to determine training loads with soccer athletes. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between Edwards’ TRIMP and session RPE methods of determining training loads in NCAA Division III male soccer players during bouts of intermittent soccer specific exercise of moderate to long duration. Participants in this study were current members of an NCAA Division III men’s varsity soccer team during the spring 2017 season (n=8, age=19.13 ± 0.835). Pre-existing HR and RPE data for each participant were taken from a scrimmage session played on April 23, 2017. Participants competed in a soccer specific scrimmage session lasting 60 minutes in duration (30 minute first half, 10 minute halftime, 30 minute second half). HR data for each participant were recorded for each participant throughout the entire soccer scrimmage using Polar Team 2 HR monitoring equipment. Each participant wore a Polar Team 2 HR chest monitor to record HR data for every second of activity. RPE data for each individual was collected 10 minutes post soccer scrimmage using a Borg’s CR-10 RPE scale. Edwards’ Training Impulse values were calculated for each individual using HR data while session RPE training load values were calculated using individuals’ CR-10 RPE scores. A Pearson’s correlation was run to examine the relationship between Edwards’ TRIMP and session RPE based training load methods. A significant, positive, moderately strong correlation was found between Edwards’ TRIMP and session RPE based TL methods (r=0.719). The r2 value of 0.517 suggested that about 52% of variance in TL values can be explained by the relationship between Edwards’ TRIMP and session RPE TL methods. The results of this study suggest that session RPE is a fairly accurate measure of TL within soccer specific exercise of moderate to long duration, specifically within NCAA Division III soccer athletes.

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