Training Load and Injury in Academy Football Players

: (Alternative Format Thesis)

Abstract

The adolescent growth spurt represents a period of increased injury risk in youth footballers. However, there is currently a dearth of high-quality research and actionable recommendations for injury prevention strategies for elite adolescent footballers. This PhD thesis aimed to be an interdisciplinary, multi-study investigation of how growth and maturation affect injury risk in youth football players. Study one aimed to evaluate the current injury situation and identify risk factors, by considering the influence of growth-related factors and exposure time upon injury risk. Significant relationships between growth rate, lower-limb growth rate, percentage of predicted adult stature and smoothed week-to-week changes in exposure against outcome variables of injury incidence and burden were reported. The second study aimed to identify barriers and facilitators to implementing an injury reduction strategy by investigating academy football practitioners’ perceptions of training load, maturation, and injury risk. Findings revealed that practitioners consider managing training load during adolescence to be comprised of three key elements: club philosophy, factors inside the club’s control (periodisation strategy; staff member practice), and factors outside the club’s control (life load; growth and maturation). The third study aimed to address the lack of research on loads undertaken outside of their academy commitments by elite youth footballers. There was no significant difference in the ‘outside of academy’ load between age-groups, but there was a significantly greater variation in the Under 15/16 group compared to the other age groups, and there were significant between-day differences in load outside of the academy and combined load. The fourth study aimed to introduce and evaluate an injury prevention program to mitigate injury risk that is associated with the adolescent growth spurt. For players with the three risk factors, there was a significant reduction in injury incidence and burden between the seasons. For players with 2 or more risk factors, there was a significant reduction in injury incidence between the baseline and intervention seasons. Overall, these studies in combination have demonstrated that by identifying adolescent footballers ‘at-risk’, evaluating the barriers and facilitators to introducing injury risk reduction strategies and introducing an intervention it is possible to have a meaningful impact on injury risk in youth footballers.

Date of Award	15 Nov 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bath
Supervisor	Sean Williams (Supervisor) & Sean Cumming (Supervisor)