These findings have been echoed in other studies, Elite basketball players spend 75% of playing time with a heart rate greater than 85% of its maximum value. McInnes, Carlson,Jones,McKenna, (1995).
Although this study was carried out on professional basketball players, the findings are still applicable to this study, and may even be amplified due to the fact that subjects on this study were untrained, leading to a greater potential for higher intensity.
Soccer play entails intermittent activity with frequent changes in intensity and duration of efforts.
Both of the team sports chosen are high paced, and don’t give players much time to recover. Because the ball is always in play in 5 a side football. i.e. you play off the wall there is less time to stop and recover, and this is the main reasoning behind my hypothesis. Indeed the only time players get to recover is when a foul is committed or when the ball has been kicked right off the court. In basketball there were frequent stoppages of up to 20 sec while the throw ins were taken.
Method
A polar heart rate monitor was given to each subject to collect data on subject heart rates,
Each subject had various different physical conditions ranging from no regular exercise at all to exercising most nights of the week.
The experiment was undertaken in laboratory sessions spread over two consecutive weeks. Because of this, we tried to keep all variables constant throughout both sessions. This included things such as clothing, temperature of room, diet, time constraints, etc. Subjects were advised of the importance of keeping things the same over both weeks, and all generally adhered to the requests.
In the first session, the ten subjects were split into two teams of five and after a quick discussion regarding rules commenced a 5 minute warm-up. Although the warm-up activities differed for each team, the exact same warm up was used for each team over both sessions, in order to normalise results gathered from the actual game.
The football game was played in two fifteen minute halves, separated with a 5 minute break in which subjects were asked to sit down in order to keep values as constant as possible over the two sessions. Subjects were allowed to receive fluid in the 5 minute half time period, but were asked to repeat what ever they drank exactly the same in the second session.
In the second session, all variables were kept constant, two fifteen minute halves, a five minute warm-up and half time break. Indeed the only variable which differed was the fact that the activity undertaken was basketball.
At the end of each session the polar data was downloaded to a laptop pc for later analysis and imported into an excel datasheet.
Results
GRAPH ONE
GRAPH TWO
GRAPH THREE
Raw Data Containing Heart Rate Values and associated errors are listed in Appendix
Discussion
Taking into account all three graphs and all other data, football gives a marginal increase in heart rate values over both halves, but this isn’t enough to be significant.
In general the results gathered show a close trend in all aspects of the sessions.
Looking at Graph one , the trend lines follow almost identical patterns. A rise in heart rate between warm up and 1st half play, a drop for the half time period, and another rise during the 2nd half.
The although there is a clear increase in heart rates for the football session, this is even mirrored in the values for warm up. I think this could be attributed to nerves as football was the 1st session. I think in the 2nd session the subjects were more relaxed and knew what to expect, giving slightly lower heart rates which weren’t related to performance differences. The lower heart rates for basketball all meet the values for football when the standard deviation is applied. I would have expected significantly higher values for football than were collected, due to the fact that basketball is intermittent giving players time to stop and recover, while the football game was played off the walls, giving the subjects virtually no time to recover, and therefore lower their heart rates.
Looking at Graph two, which shows the mean heart rates for each the values are again very close to one another for all aspects, indeed all fit within each others y- error bars. What this graph does show however is a slight performance decline (<5%) in the 2nd halves of both sports. The difference in values for basketball varied by only 6 beats per minute, which is an irrelevant difference considering were going on mean values and the SD is over 17 bpm. Both sports contain periods of high intensity activity (e.g. sprinting and jumping) which are interspersed with periods of low intensity activity. This is going to lead to inevitable fatigue especially in untrained subjects, the like of which was shown here. I would however have of expected a larger difference in mean values for each halves than was shown. This could have been down to subjects not putting in 100% effort in the 1st halves, leaving them less fatigued and therefore more able to perform in the 2nd. A factor which affected the values was the presence of two goal keepers in the football game. These two subjects wouldn’t have been running around quite as much as the others, and therefore contributed to a lower mean score in comparison to basketball where all subjects were active for the majority. The results gathered agree to an extent with Reilly T (1995) which stated that muscle glycogen stores were severely depleted at the end of the 5 a side football game, but do not prove conclusive. For more definitive results I’d expect to see a >10% performance decline measured in elevated heart rates. Just looking at the subjects it was clear to see that they were quite physically tired at the end of both sessions, and all were most definitly out of breath, but as there were so many different levels of physical fitness conclusions cannot be drawn on this alone.
Again, Graph three doesn’t draw any conclusive results on the comparison of physiological demands. This graph shows maximal heart rates for each sport and includes warm-up/half time values also. The graph shows a drop in heart rates in the half time period, which is what I would have expected as the subjects ceased commencing physical activity and were asked to sit down. The heart rates returned to normal once the 2nd period of play commenced though. Elite basketball players spend 75% of playing time with a heart rate greater than 85% of its maximum value. McInnes, Carlson,Jones,McKenna, (1995). The mean values for basketball don’t quite reflect these findings, with average heart rate for basketball at around 150 +- 17 bpm. With the maximal heart rate for my group of 21 year olds at roughly 200 bmp, this is just off the 85% value of 170bpm. This value is is worked out for the mean of the group, and I did find that 3 of the 10 players did reach 85% of their maximal heart rate. Motivation was a big factor in the other 7 subjects failing to reach 85% of their maximal heart rate, as I think some didn’t enjoy playing either game as much as they could have done.
Overall both games were found to be relatively physically demanding and therefore recognise findings in all of the case studies and literature reviewed in the introduction. I failed to find any evidence published stating that either sport was physically demanding, and from my heart rate values for either game cannot draw any solid conclusion as to which is the more physically demanding.
References
McInnes SE, Carlson JS, Jones CJ, McKenna MJ (1995)
The physiological load imposed on basketball players during competition
Journal of Sports Sciences 1995 October, 13 (5): 387-97 English
Shephard RJ (1987)
Biology and medicine of soccer: an update
Journal of Sports Sciences 1999 October 17 (10): 757-786. English
Reilly T (1990)
Physiological aspects of soccer
Biology of Sport 1994 11 (1): 3-20.
Reilly T (1990)
Physiological demands of soccer
((Futbolun fizyolojik temelleri))
Spor Hekimligi Dergisi - Turkish Journal of Sports Medicine 1991 March 26 (1): 41-7.
Allen JD, Butterfly R, Welsch MA, Wood R (1998)
The physical and physiological value of 5-a-side soccer training to 11-a-side match play
Journal of Human Movement Studies 1998 34 (1): 1-11.
