3.17 Football, Hockey, and Soccer Performance

The big idea. Football, soccer, ice hockey and field hockey all get filed under “team sports,” so they often get trained the same way. That is a mistake. These four sports ask very different things of a body.

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Picture four athletes on the same track on a Monday morning. The football lineman goes flat out for about five seconds, then stands around for half a minute before the next play. The soccer midfielder keeps moving for ninety minutes straight and has to find a sprint whenever the game asks for one. The hockey player skates hard for forty seconds, sits on the bench for two or three minutes, then does it again. The field hockey player does a version of all of that while bent forward at the waist, stick near the turf. Four bodies, four completely different jobs.

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If you hand all four the same running programme, three of them get something they do not need. The lineman spends weeks building a big aerobic engine he will barely touch. The midfielder gets short, sharp work that never teaches her to keep going when her legs are heavy in the eighty-fifth minute. The hockey player trains long steady efforts and then gasps through a forty-second shift. That is not a small waste. It is the difference between a player who is still dangerous late and one who quietly disappears.

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So where do you start? Not with the sport’s name. Start with two numbers: how long the player works, and how long they get to recover. A five-second effort with thirty seconds of rest is almost entirely a strength and power problem. A forty-second effort with two minutes of rest sits in the middle, where the body makes a lot of energy fast and pays for it afterwards. Ninety minutes of stop-start running with no real rest is an endurance problem wearing a sprinting costume. Get those two numbers right and most of the programme writes itself.

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The second thing worth throwing out is total distance. global positioning system (GPS) trackers made it easy to measure, so it became the number everyone quotes. A midfielder covers eleven kilometres, a striker covers nine, and somebody decides the midfielder worked harder. But a slow jog and a full sprint both add metres. What actually separates a fit player from a tired one is the hard stuff: how many sprints, how many sharp accelerations, how many times they changed direction at speed, and whether those numbers held up in the last twenty minutes. Two players can cover the same distance and have completely different games.

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Then there is the part most programmes get backwards: speed. Everybody wants to run faster, so speed work goes in early, while legs are fresh and enthusiasm is high. The trouble is that going fast is only half a skill. Stopping is the other half, and stopping is where hamstrings and groins tear. A body that cannot slow down under control is a body that will get hurt trying to speed up. Build the ability to absorb force first, then ask for speed.

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That injury point deserves its own moment. In these four sports, most missed games come down to two things: hamstrings and groins. Not freak collisions, not bad luck. Both respond well to cheap, boring, well-tested exercises done regularly. Nordic hamstring curls and Copenhagen adductor work take a few minutes, need almost no equipment, and cut those injuries roughly in half in study after study (Petersen, 2011; Harøy, 2019). Sprinting at close to full speed in training does the same job from a different angle: a hamstring that has already been to top speed in practice is far less likely to tear when the game demands it. Sprinting is not just a way to get quicker. It is protection.

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Last, the calendar. None of this happens in a quiet gym with a blank schedule. There is a match on Saturday, maybe another on Wednesday, and a coach who wants the team fresh for both. So the week gets built around the game, not the other way round. Hard work goes where there is room to recover from it, usually right after a match when there are days before the next one, and the days before kick-off get lighter. A brilliant plan that leaves players heavy-legged on match day is a bad plan.

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The rest of this article works through each of those pieces in order: reading the demands of a sport properly, why distance is a weak measure, where speed work actually belongs, how to protect hamstrings and groins, and how to fit it all around a fixture list nobody controls. The later sections go deeper into the testing and programming detail if you want it.

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Key takeaways

1. How long a player works and how long they rest should shape conditioning more than anything else.
2. Total distance covered barely separates a fit player from an unfit one. What happens in the last twenty minutes does.
3. Speed work comes last. Teach the body to stop before you ask it to go fast.
4. Hamstring and groin injuries cause most of the missed games here, and both drop sharply with cheap, well-tested exercises.
5. Sprinting at full speed in training protects players. It is not just a way to get quicker.
6. The match sets the week. Hard work goes where there is room to recover, not where it happens to fit the calendar.

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Reading the demands before writing the programme

Ask a coach in any of these sports what their players need and you will hear the same three words: speed, strength, conditioning. True, and not much help. What actually matters is the shape of the demand, and that shape changes a lot between sports that look alike from the stands.

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Comparing the demands of four field and ice sportsA four column table comparing soccer, American football, ice hockey and field hockey by typical work pattern, dominant energy demand, distinguishing physical quality and main injury concern.Comparing the demands of four field and ice sportsTypical work patternDominant demandDistinguishing qualityMain injury concernSoccer90 min continuous, 10–11km coveredAerobic base withrepeated sprintsRepeat-sprint abilityover long durationHamstring strain, groinAmerican football4–8 s plays, 25–40 srestPhosphagen withnear-full recoveryMaximal strength andaccelerationKnee, shoulder, contactinjuriesIce hockey40–60 s shifts, 2–4 minbench restGlycolytic with aerobicrecoverySkating power and hipstrengthGroin and hip adductorstrainField hockeyRolling substitutions,crouched postureAerobic with repeatedhigh-intensity effortsTrunk endurance inflexed positionsLow back, hamstringRugbyIntermittent with heavycollision loadMixed, with high contactcostCollision tolerance andrepeat effortConcussion, shoulder,knee

Figure 1. These sports are routinely grouped together and trained identically. The work-to-rest structure of each is different enough that generic conditioning serves none of them well.

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Consider two athletes. An American football lineman performs an effort lasting four to eight seconds, then waits twenty-five to forty seconds before the next one. The recovery is close to complete, which means each play can be near-maximal, and the athlete’s limiting quality is how much force they can produce, not how long they can keep producing it.

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A soccer midfielder covers ten or eleven kilometres over ninety minutes, of which perhaps eight hundred metres to a kilometre and a half is at high speed, distributed unpredictably (Bangsbo et al., 2006; Bradley, 2009). Their limit is not peak force. It is how much high-intensity work they can produce and repeat across an extended period.

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These two athletes should not be doing the same conditioning, and yet in many programmes they do.

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Why total distance is a bad metric

Global positioning data made total distance easy to collect, and it became the default number reported to coaches. It is close to useless as a measure of performance or conditioning.

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High-intensity output declines across a matchTwo lines across ninety minutes showing high-speed running distance per fifteen-minute block declining, with a second line showing the effect of superior repeat-sprint capacity.High-intensity output declines across a matchHigh-speed running, lowercapacityHigh-speed running, highercapacity0–1515–3030–45HT60–7575–90EndLowModerateHighMatch time in fifteen-minute blocksHigh-speed running per blockHalf-time recovery produces a temporaryreboundThe gap opens in the final third ofthe match

Figure 2. Total distance covered barely changes between a well-conditioned and a poorly conditioned player. What changes is the high-intensity portion, and that is the portion that decides matches.

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The reason is that total distance is remarkably stable. A poorly conditioned player and a well conditioned player will cover similar total distances across a match, because a large share of that distance is walking and jogging that neither finds difficult. What differs is the high-intensity portion, and specifically how much of it survives into the final thirty minutes (Bradley, 2009).

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• Total distance Everything covered, walking included. Stable across fitness levels and heavily influenced by tactical role and match state. Weak as a conditioning indicator.
• High-speed running distance Distance above a defined velocity threshold, often around 5.5 metres per second. Far more sensitive to conditioning and to fatigue (Bradley, 2009).
• Sprint distance and count Efforts above a higher threshold. Small in volume, disproportionately important to outcomes, and the first thing to decline.
• Accelerations and decelerations Counts of high rates of velocity change. Often more metabolically and mechanically costly than the running itself, and frequently the best available proxy for mechanical load.

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The practical instruction is simple. If you are tracking anything, track the high-intensity variables and track how they change across the match and across the season. A player whose high-speed running in the last fifteen minutes has fallen steadily over a month is telling you something that their total distance will never reveal.

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Deceleration is where these sports break

Acceleration is trained enthusiastically and deceleration is largely ignored, which is the wrong way round given where injuries occur. The forces involved in stopping are generally higher than those involved in starting, they are absorbed eccentrically, and they arrive with less preparation time.

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Hamstring strains, which dominate injury statistics in soccer and in American football, typically occur during the late swing phase of high-speed running, when the hamstring is lengthening under high load while decelerating the shin. Groin and adductor injuries, which dominate in ice hockey, occur during rapid lateral loading. In both cases the mechanism is eccentric.

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This is why Figure 3 places eccentric and braking capacity before speed work. An athlete exposed to maximum velocity running without the eccentric capacity to control it is being asked to absorb forces their tissue has not been prepared for.

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Development, injury reduction, and load management

Sequencing development correctly

The order in which qualities are developed matters more than the specific exercises chosen. A well-selected exercise applied at the wrong point in the sequence produces injury rather than adaptation.

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Building a field-sport athlete in orderFour stacked development stages from general strength and tissue capacity at the base to sport-integrated speed expression at the top.Building a field-sport athlete in orderStage 1 — Tissue capacity and general strengthBilateral and unilateral strength, posterior chain loading, calf and hamstring capacity work, and progressive exposure torunning volume. The dull foundation that determines whether everything above it survives.Stage 2 — Eccentric and braking capacityNordic hamstring work, decelerative running, controlled landings and lateral braking. Field sports break down in decelerationfar more often than in acceleration, and this stage is the most commonly skipped.Stage 3 — Power and rate of force developmentPlyometrics, ballistic work, Olympic derivatives and horizontal jumping. Turns the strength built in stage one into force thatcan be produced quickly enough to matter.Stage 4 — Speed and sport integrationMaximum velocity exposure, acceleration work, reactive agility, and finally the same qualities expressed inside small-sidedgames and sport practice.

Figure 3. Speed is the last thing built, not the first. Athletes who begin with speed work before they have the strength to decelerate simply get injured faster.

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The foundation stage is unglamorous and routinely rushed. It consists of general strength, unilateral capacity, posterior chain loading, and gradual accumulation of running volume so that tissue tolerance rises before intensity does (Gabbett, 2016). In a pre-season with a returning squad, this stage cannot be compressed into a week regardless of what the fixture list demands.

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The eccentric stage is the one that changes injury outcomes. Nordic hamstring exercise, decelerative running drills, controlled landing exposure and lateral braking work all belong here. The evidence base for eccentric hamstring work in particular is among the strongest in sports injury prevention.

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Only after those two stages does power work make sense, and only after power work does maximum velocity exposure make sense. Athletes who reverse this order are quick for approximately three weeks and then unavailable.

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Hamstrings and groins: Two problems with good answers

These two injury categories account for a disproportionate share of time lost in field and ice sports, and unusually for sports injury prevention, both have interventions with reasonable supporting evidence.

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For hamstrings, the Nordic hamstring exercise has been studied extensively and multiple systematic reviews report substantial reductions in hamstring injury rates in programmes that implement it consistently (Petersen, 2011). The problem is not the evidence; it is compliance. The exercise is uncomfortable, produces significant soreness when introduced badly, and is frequently abandoned.

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1. Introduce Nordics with very low volume, such as one set of three partial repetitions, and progress over eight weeks rather than eight days.
2. Expect and plan for soreness in the first two weeks; this is the main reason programmes get dropped.
3. Maintain rather than build in-season, typically one set of a few repetitions once or twice weekly.
4. Combine with hamstring work at long muscle lengths, such as Romanian deadlifts and single-leg variants.
5. Do not treat it as a substitute for high-speed running exposure, which is a separate protective factor.

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For groins, the Copenhagen adduction exercise has a similar and growing evidence base, particularly in soccer and ice hockey where adductor injuries are common (Harøy, 2019). The same compliance problem applies and the same graduated introduction is required.

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The most commonly missed protective factor for hamstrings is high-speed running itself (Malone, 2017). Tissue adapts to the loads it experiences, and a hamstring that has not been exposed to near-maximal velocity in training is unprepared for the first time it happens in a match. Athletes returning from injury or from an off-season need progressive reintroduction of high-speed exposure, not avoidance of it.

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Conditioning designed around the work pattern

Once the demand profile in Figure 1 is understood, conditioning design becomes fairly mechanical.

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• American football Short maximal efforts with near-complete recovery. Conditioning should mirror that: Repeated efforts of four to eight seconds with thirty to forty seconds rest. Extended aerobic work has limited direct relevance beyond a general health and recovery base.
• Soccer and field hockey Repeated high-intensity efforts across ninety minutes. Requires a substantial aerobic base plus dedicated repeat-sprint work. High-intensity interval formats and small-sided games both serve this well (Buchheit & Laursen, 2013).
• Ice hockey Forty to sixty second maximal shifts with two to four minutes of bench recovery. This is a glycolytic demand sitting on an aerobic recovery base (Montgomery, 1988). Intervals should replicate the shift length rather than defaulting to short sprints (Buchheit & Laursen, 2013).
• Rugby Intermittent running plus a substantial collision load that does not appear in running metrics at all. Conditioning must account for the mechanical cost of contact, which is easy to underestimate from GPS alone.

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Small-sided games deserve specific mention because they are the most efficient tool available for the soccer and hockey profiles. They produce appropriate physiological load while simultaneously developing technical and decision-making qualities, and players tolerate them far better than equivalent running. The trade-off is that load is harder to control precisely, which matters most when managing return from injury.

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The in-season week is dictated by the fixture

In-season, the coach does not choose when hard work happens. The fixture list does. What remains under control is where within that constraint the load is placed.

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Distributing load across an in-season weekFive stacked rows describing how training load is arranged across the days between two matches, from the match itself through recovery, loading and taper.Distributing load across an in-season weekMatch day plus one — recoveryVery low load. Light movement, mobility, and upper-body maintenance for non-participants.Attempting quality work here produces neither adaptation nor recovery.Match day plus two — reintroductionModerate load. Strength work returns, technical skill work at controlled intensity, someacceleration exposure. The first day quality is genuinely available.Match day minus three — peak loadThe heaviest day of the week. Maximum velocity exposure, hardest conditioning, most demandingtactical work. Far enough from the match to recover.Match day minus two — moderateVolume drops, intensity holds. Shorter, sharper tactical work and a reduced strength stimulus ifused at all.Match day minus one — activationLow volume, high quality. Short accelerations, set pieces, brief tactical review. Nothing thatcreates fatigue.Approaching the matchFalling load

Figure 4. The in-season week is defined by the fixture, not by the coach. Load has to be placed where recovery allows it rather than where it would be convenient.

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The standard structure works backwards from the next match. The day after a match is for recovery only, since neither quality work nor genuine adaptation is available from a fatigued squad (Cormack, 2008). The peak load day sits three days before the next match, far enough away that the athlete recovers in time. The day before the match is short and sharp.

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Two principles matter more than the specific layout. First, the hard day should be genuinely hard and the easy days genuinely easy; a week of uniformly moderate training produces fatigue without adaptation. Second, maximum velocity exposure must appear somewhere in the week even in-season, because removing it entirely leaves the hamstrings unprepared for the match.

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• Match day plus one: Recovery only. Do not attempt quality work.
• Match day plus two: Strength returns, moderate technical work, some acceleration exposure.
• Match day minus three: Peak load. Maximum velocity, hardest conditioning, most demanding tactical work.
• Match day minus two: Volume falls, intensity holds.
• Match day minus one: Activation only. Nothing fatiguing.

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With two matches in a week the structure compresses and something must be removed. In that situation, the priority is protecting recovery and maintaining a small amount of high-speed exposure, and the strength session is usually what goes.

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Ice hockey and the specificity trap

Hockey deserves separate treatment because skating differs mechanically from running in ways that change the training answer.

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The skating stride is characterised by hip abduction and external rotation with a laterally directed push, performed in a flexed trunk position. This loads the hip adductors, abductors and hip flexors far more than running does, and it explains why groin injuries dominate hockey injury statistics while hamstring injuries dominate in running sports (Montgomery, 1988; Tyler, 2001).

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• Prioritise hip adductor and abductor strength through range, including the Copenhagen adduction progression.
• Include lateral and multidirectional plyometrics rather than exclusively linear jumping.
• Address hip flexor length and strength, since the flexed skating posture shortens them chronically.
• Maintain trunk endurance in flexed positions, which is the posture the sport is played in.
• Do not neglect linear running entirely, since it maintains qualities skating does not develop.

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The specificity trap is the belief that because hockey is played on skates, all training should resemble skating. Off-ice training exists precisely to develop qualities that skating does not develop and to load tissues in ways the sport does not. Slide boards and skating-mimicking machines have a place, but a hockey player still benefits from a heavy squat and from running.

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Pre-season and in-season templates

A six-week pre-season build

The purpose of pre-season is to raise tissue capacity and reintroduce high-speed running progressively, not to produce exhaustion. The most common error is front-loading conditioning volume in week one.

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• Weeks 1–2: General strength three times weekly, running volume built gradually, Nordic and Copenhagen exercises introduced at very low volume, no maximum velocity work.
• Weeks 3–4: Strength continues, eccentric work progresses, first exposures to high-speed running at around 85 to 90 per cent of maximum, small-sided games introduced.
• Weeks 5–6: Full maximum velocity exposure once weekly, sport-specific conditioning replaces general conditioning, strength volume reduces while intensity holds.

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A single in-season week with one match

• Sunday (MD+1): Recovery. Light movement, mobility. Non-participants complete a full session.
• Monday (MD+2): Strength session, technical work, short accelerations.
• Tuesday (MD-3): Peak day. Maximum velocity exposure, hardest conditioning block, full tactical session.
• Wednesday (MD-2): Moderate tactical work, reduced volume, optional short strength maintenance.
• Thursday (MD-1): Activation. Short sprints, set pieces, tactical review.
• Friday: Match day.
• Saturday: Complete rest.

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What each element in the week is doing

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• Recovery, light movement, and mobility on match day plus one (Sunday). Low-intensity movement promotes blood flow and reduces stiffness without adding mechanical load to tissue that is still repairing.
• A full session for non-participants. Players who did not accumulate match load need a training stimulus, otherwise squad fitness diverges sharply across a season.
• Strength session and short accelerations (Monday, match day plus two). Strength work is placed once soreness has peaked and begun to fall. Short accelerations restore neuromuscular sharpness at a volume too low to interfere with recovery.
• Maximum velocity exposure (Tuesday, peak day). The most important injury-prevention exposure in the week. Hamstrings tolerate high-speed running only if they see it regularly, and the furthest point from competition is the safest place for it.
• Hardest conditioning block and full tactical session. Conditioning and tactical volume are concentrated on the day furthest from the match so that residual fatigue has time to clear.
• Moderate tactical work with reduced volume (Wednesday). Begins the taper. Skill and decision-making exposure continues while physical load steps down.
• Optional short strength maintenance. A single low-volume exposure preserves strength adaptations without measurable cost to match-day output.
• Activation, short sprints, set pieces (Thursday, match day minus one). Potentiates the nervous system and rehearses set-piece patterns. Volume is minimal, quality is high.
• Match day (Friday). The competition itself supplies the largest single dose of high-speed running, accelerations, and unplanned braking in the week, which is why prescribed volume falls around it.
• Complete rest (Saturday). One genuinely empty day allows the connective-tissue remodelling that repeated sub-maximal days interrupt.

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Minimum effective in-season maintenance

When time is short, four things should survive regardless of what else is cut. They cost very little and their absence is what produces both performance decline and injuries.

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1. One exposure to near-maximum velocity running per week.
2. One set of Nordic hamstring work and one of Copenhagen adduction per week.
3. One heavy strength stimulus, even if brief.
4. One genuinely low day.

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Everything else is negotiable. These four are not, and squads that protect them tend to end seasons with more players available than squads that do not.

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Sport applications

Soccer requires the largest aerobic base of the group alongside repeat-sprint capacity, and its injury profile is dominated by hamstring and groin strains that respond to well-established eccentric interventions.

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American football divides sharply by position. Linemen need maximal strength and short-effort power with minimal aerobic demand, while skill positions need acceleration, maximum velocity and repeat-effort capacity closer to a soccer profile.

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Ice hockey is defined by shift-based glycolytic demand and by the hip and adductor loading of the skating stride, which makes groin-specific work non-negotiable rather than optional.

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Field hockey adds a sustained flexed trunk posture to a repeated high-intensity profile, so trunk endurance and hip mobility carry more weight than in the other sports here.

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Rugby carries a collision load that running metrics do not capture at all, meaning perceived and mechanical load are routinely underestimated when planning the week from GPS data alone.

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Common mistakes

• Reporting total distance as a conditioning metric. It barely differs between well and poorly conditioned players. High-intensity distance, and how much of it survives to the final thirty minutes, is the number that matters.
• Training all team sports the same way. A four-second play with forty seconds rest and a ninety-minute repeat-sprint demand require different conditioning. Read the work-to-rest structure first.
• Doing speed work before deceleration capacity exists. Field sports break down eccentrically. Exposing an athlete to maximum velocity before they can control it is a reliable way to produce a hamstring strain.
• Removing high-speed running to protect the hamstrings. The opposite of protective. Tissue adapts to the loads it meets, and a hamstring never exposed to high velocity in training is unprepared for the first match sprint.
• Abandoning Nordics because of soreness. The soreness comes from introducing them too aggressively. Start with one set of three partial repetitions and build over two months.
• Making every day moderately hard. A week of uniform moderate load accumulates fatigue without producing adaptation. Hard days should be hard and easy days genuinely easy.
• Believing all hockey training must resemble skating. Off-ice training exists to develop qualities skating does not. A hockey player still benefits from heavy squats and from running.
• Front-loading pre-season conditioning. Tissue capacity rises slowly and running volume needs progressive accumulation. The first week of pre-season causes a disproportionate share of the season’s soft-tissue injuries (Gabbett, 2016).

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Coaching cues

• "Push the ground back" for acceleration mechanics.
• "Get tall and cycle" for maximum velocity running.
• "Small steps into the stop" to organise deceleration.
• "Chest over the knee" when teaching braking positions.
• "Skate wide, not long" for hockey stride mechanics.
• "Recovery day means recovery" to protect the easy end of the week.
• "One fast day a week, always."
• "If the last twenty minutes fall apart, the problem is repeat-effort capacity, not effort."

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FAQs

How much high-speed running should players do in-season?

At least one exposure to near-maximum velocity per week is the widely used minimum, typically within a full training session and after a thorough preparation. The purpose is as much protective as it is performance-related, since the hamstring adapts to the velocities it experiences. The exact volume depends on position, fixture congestion and individual history.

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Do Nordic hamstring exercises actually reduce injuries?

Multiple systematic reviews report substantial reductions in hamstring injury rates in teams that implement them consistently, which makes this one of the better-supported interventions in sports injury prevention. The practical barrier is compliance rather than efficacy. Introduce them at very low volume and progress over two months to avoid the soreness that causes programmes to be abandoned.

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Why do hockey players get so many groin injuries?

The skating stride involves a laterally directed push with hip abduction and external rotation, which loads the adductors very differently from running. Combined with a flexed trunk posture and high shift intensity, this produces a demand profile that makes adductor strain the dominant injury. Copenhagen adduction work and general hip strength through range are the standard responses.

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Is small-sided game training enough conditioning on its own?

For soccer and field hockey it comes close, since it produces appropriate physiological load while developing technical and decision-making qualities simultaneously. The limitation is that load is harder to control precisely, and maximum velocity exposure is rarely achieved in small spaces. Most programmes use small-sided games as the bulk of conditioning plus dedicated high-speed running.

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Should linemen do the same conditioning as skill players?

No. American football divides sharply by position. Linemen perform short maximal efforts with near-complete recovery and are limited by force production, so their conditioning should mirror that pattern. Skill positions have a repeat-effort and maximum velocity profile much closer to soccer and should be trained accordingly.

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How do you manage two matches in one week?

Something has to be removed. Protect recovery and maintain a small amount of high-speed exposure, and cut the strength session or reduce it to a single heavy set. Attempting to complete a normal week around two fixtures reliably produces accumulated fatigue and a soft-tissue injury by the third or fourth week.

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What is the most useful metric if I can only track one thing?

High-speed running distance, ideally broken down by fifteen-minute block so you can see how much survives to the end of the match. If you cannot capture velocity, acceleration and deceleration counts are a reasonable proxy for mechanical load and often better than distance.

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When should young athletes start speed and strength work?

Well-supervised resistance training and speed development are appropriate for young athletes and are supported by major position statements, provided the loading is progressive and technique-led (Lloyd, 2014). The sequencing principle in this article applies with more emphasis rather than less: Build general capacity and movement competence before introducing high-intensity speed exposure.

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Recommended videos

Each video below was chosen because it covers a specific part of this article in more depth than text alone allows.

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Related reading on FitXplor

• 3.4 Sprint Mechanics and Maximum Velocity
• 3.6 Acceleration: Mechanics, Physiology, and Programming
• 3.7 Deceleration: Braking Mechanics and Eccentric Strength
• 3.10 Agility and Change of Direction
• 3.13 Reaction Time and Reactive Agility
• 3.11 Hopping, Bounding, and Horizontal Plyometrics
• 4.5 The Hip: Mobility, Stability, and Power Transfer
• 1.4 Exercise Physiology and Energy Systems

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References

Bangsbo, J., Mohr, M., Krustrup, P. (2006). Physical and metabolic demands of training and match-play in the elite football player. Journal of Sports Sciences.

Bradley, P.S. et al. (2009). High-intensity running in English FA Premier League soccer matches. Journal of Sports Sciences.

Petersen, J. et al. (2011). Preventive effect of eccentric training on acute hamstring injuries in men’s soccer. American Journal of Sports Medicine.

van Dyk, N. et al. (2019). Including the Nordic hamstring exercise in injury prevention programmes halves the rate of hamstring injuries. British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Harøy, J. et al. (2019). The adductor strengthening programme prevents groin problems among male football players. British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Malone, S. et al. (2017). Can the workload-injury relationship be moderated by improved strength, speed and repeated-sprint qualities? Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport.

Gabbett, T.J. (2016). The training-injury prevention paradox: should athletes be training smarter and harder? British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Cormack, S.J. et al. (2008). Neuromuscular and endocrine responses of elite players to an Australian rules football match. International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance.

Montgomery, D.L. (1988). Physiology of ice hockey. Sports Medicine.

Tyler, T.F. et al. (2001). The association of hip strength and flexibility with the incidence of adductor muscle strains in professional ice hockey players. American Journal of Sports Medicine.

Buchheit, M., Laursen, P.B. (2013). High-intensity interval training, solutions to the programming puzzle. Sports Medicine.

Lloyd, R.S. et al. (2014). Position statement on youth resistance training: the 2014 International Consensus. British Journal of Sports Medicine.