In-season training load quantification of one-, two- and three-game week schedules in a top European professional soccer team

Top European soccer teams that play in UEFA competitions often participate in one, two- or three-games per week. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure optimal match-day performance and full recovery. The aim of this study was to quantify internal and external training load (TL) within five microcycles: M1 and M2 - one-game weeks; M3 and M4 - two-game weeks; M5 - three-game week). Thirteen elite soccer players participated in this study. A global positioning system (GPS) was used to measure the total distance covered and distances of different exercise training zones (1-5), the session ratings of perceived exertion (s-RPE) scores and the amount of creatine kinase (CK) created during daily training sessions for the 2015-2016 in-season period. The data were analysed with respect to the number of days prior to a given match. The main results indicate that there was a significant difference in training intensity for zone 1 between M2 and M4 (4010.2 ± 103.5 and 4507.6 ± 133.0 m, respectively); a significant difference in training intensity for zone 3 between M1 and M5 (686.1 ± 42.8 and 801.2 ± 61.2 m, respectively); a significant difference in the duration of the training sessions and matches between M2 and M5 (69.2 ± 2.1 and 79.6 ± 2.3) and M3 and M5 (69.7 ± 1.0 and 79.6 ± 2.3); and finally, there was a significant difference in CK between M3 and M2 (325.5 ± 155.0 and 194.4 ± 48.9). Moreover, there was a significant decrease in TL in the last day prior to a match, for all microcycles and all variables. There was no significant difference with respect to s-RPE. This study provides the first report of daily external and internal TLs and weekly accumulated load (training sessions and match demands) during one, two, and three-game week schedules in a group of elite soccer players. Expected significant differences are found in daily and accumulated loads for within- and between-game schedules. A similar pattern is exhibited for one- and two-game week microcycles regarding the day before the match, which exhibits a decrease in all variables. Despite the different number of games played per week, TL remain similar between microcycles for zone 2 and 5, plus s-RPE.This project was supported by the National Funds through FCT—Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (UID/DTP/04045/2013) and the European Fund for Regional Development (FEDER) allocated by European Union through the COMPETE 2020 Programme (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006969)—competitiveness and internationalization (POCI). The authors disclose funding received for this work from any of the following organizations: National Institutes of Health (NIH); Welcome Trust; Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI); and other(s).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Gametocytes: insights gained during a decade of molecular monitoring

In vertebrate hosts, malaria parasites produce specialized male and female sexual stages (gametocytes). Soon after being taken up by a mosquito, gametocytes rapidly produce gametes and, once mated, they infect their vector and can be transmitted to new hosts. Despite being the parasite stages that were first identified (over a century ago), gametocytes have remained elusive, and basic questions remain concerning their biology. However, the postgenomic era has substantiated information on the specialized molecular machinery of gametocytogenesis and expedited the development of molecular tools to detect and quantify gametocytes. The application of such highly sensitive and specific tools has opened up novel approaches and provided new insights into gametocyte biology. Here, we review the discoveries made during the past decade, highlight unanswered questions and suggest new directions

Strategy Logic with Imperfect Information

We introduce an extension of Strategy Logic for the imperfect-information setting, called SLii, and study its model-checking problem. As this logic naturally captures multi-player games with imperfect information, the problem turns out to be undecidable. We introduce a syntactical class of "hierarchical instances" for which, intuitively, as one goes down the syntactic tree of the formula, strategy quantifications are concerned with finer observations of the model. We prove that model-checking SLii restricted to hierarchical instances is decidable. This result, because it allows for complex patterns of existential and universal quantification on strategies, greatly generalises previous ones, such as decidability of multi-player games with imperfect information and hierarchical observations, and decidability of distributed synthesis for hierarchical systems. To establish the decidability result, we introduce and study QCTL*ii, an extension of QCTL* (itself an extension of CTL* with second-order quantification over atomic propositions) by parameterising its quantifiers with observations. The simple syntax of QCTL* ii allows us to provide a conceptually neat reduction of SLii to QCTL*ii that separates concerns, allowing one to forget about strategies and players and focus solely on second-order quantification. While the model-checking problem of QCTL*ii is, in general, undecidable, we identify a syntactic fragment of hierarchical formulas and prove, using an automata-theoretic approach, that it is decidable. The decidability result for SLii follows since the reduction maps hierarchical instances of SLii to hierarchical formulas of QCTL*ii

Inclusion and Exclusion Dependencies in Team Semantics: On Some Logics of Imperfect Information

We introduce some new logics of imperfect information by adding atomic formulas corresponding to inclusion and exclusion dependencies to the language of first order logic. The properties of these logics and their relationships with other logics of imperfect information are then studied. Furthermore, a game theoretic semantics for these logics is developed. As a corollary of these results, we characterize the expressive power of independence logic, thus answering an open problem posed in (Gr\"adel and V\"a\"an\"anen, 2010)

In-season internal and external training load quantification of an elite European soccer team

Elite soccer teams that participate in European competitions need to have players in the best physical and psychological status possible to play matches. As a consequence of congestive schedule, controlling the training load (TL) and thus the level of effort and fatigue of players to reach higher performances during the matches is therefore critical. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to provide the first report of seasonal internal and external training load that included Hooper Index (HI) scores in elite soccer players during an in-season period. Nineteen elite soccer players were sampled, using global position system to collect total distance, high-speed distance (HSD) and average speed (AvS). It was also collected session rating of perceived exertion (s-RPE) and HI scores during the daily training sessions throughout the 2015-2016 in-season period. Data were analysed across ten mesocycles (M: 1 to 10) and collected according to the number of days prior to a one-match week. Total daily distance covered was higher at the start (M1 and M3) compared to the final mesocycle (M10) of the season. M1 (5589m) reached a greater distance than M5 (4473m) (ES = 9.33 [12.70, 5.95]) and M10 (4545m) (ES = 9.84 [13.39, 6.29]). M3 (5691m) reached a greater distance than M5 (ES = 9.07 [12.36, 5.78]), M7 (ES = 6.13 [8.48, 3.79]) and M10 (ES = 9.37 [12.76, 5.98]). High-speed running distance was greater in M1 (227m), than M5 (92m) (ES = 27.95 [37.68, 18.22]) and M10 (138m) (ES = 8.46 [11.55, 5.37]). Interestingly, the s-RPE response was higher in M1 (331au) in comparison to the last mesocycle (M10, 239au). HI showed minor variations across mesocycles and in days prior to the match. Every day prior to a match, all internal and external TL variables expressed significant lower values to other days prior to a match (p<0.01). In general, there were no differences between player positions. Conclusions: Our results reveal that despite the existence of some significant differences between mesocycles, there were minor changes across the in-season period for the internal and external TL variables used. Furthermore, it was observed that MD-1 presented a reduction of external TL (regardless of mesocycle) while internal TL variables did not have the same record during in-season match-day-minus.: The authors state that there were no salaries’ fund from a tobacco company. Also, the authors are not aware of any competing interests. This project was supported by the National Funds through FCT—Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (UID/DTP/04045/2013)—and the European Fund for Regional Development (FEDER) allocated by European Union through the COMPETE 2020 Programme (POCI-01-0145- FEDER-006969)—competitiveness and internationalization (POCI). All funding received for this work from any of the following organizations: National Institutes of Health (NIH); Welcome Trust; Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio