PhD project: Physical match performance and training loads of female football players

The primary objective of the Female Football Centre is to obtain new and fundamental insights and knowledge on highly relevant performance factors that influence sustainable development and health of female elite football athletes. For this project, gender specific aspects related to the training principal “specificity” will receive focused attention.

The overall objective will be examined through three integrated studies, where we specifically aim to:

1. Establish the activity profiles of highly trained female football players by playing position.
2. Quantify the match-to-match variability in variables commonly used to assess match activity.
3. Track the microcycles of professional football teams and compare differences in training load by day and by squad status (starter versus non-starter).

Project start: 08.2020
Project end: 08.2024
Project category: PhD project

PI:
Svein Arne Pettersen (Head supervisor)
Andreas Kjæreng Winther (PhD candidate)

Project members:
Andreas Kjæreng Winther (PhD candidate)
Svein Arne Pettersen (Head supervisor)
Dag Johansen (Co-supervisor)
Morten Bresdgaard Randers
Sigurd Pedersen
Ivan Baptista

Results:

Winther, A. K., Baptista, I., Pedersen, S., Randers, M. B., Johansen, D., Krustrup, P., & Pettersen, S. A. (2022). Position specific physical performance and running intensity fluctuations in elite women’s football. Scandinavian journal of medicine & science.

Baptista, I., Winther, A. K., Johansen, D., Randers, M. B., Pedersen, S., & Pettersen, S. A. (2022). The variability of physical match demands in elite women’s football. Science and Medicine in Football, 6(5), 559-565.

Midoglu, C., Winther, A. K., Boeker, M., Pettersen, S. D., Pedersen, S., Ragab, N., ... & Halvorsen, P. (2023). SoccerMon, A Large-Scale Multivariate Soccer Athlete Health, Performance, and Position Monitoring Dataset. Open Science Framework (OSF).

Baptista, I., Winther, A. K., Pedersen, S., Johansen, D., & Pettersen, S. A. (2023). The influence of age on the match-to-match variability of physical performance in women’s elite football. Frontiers in Physiology, 14, 821.

Members:

Svein Arne Pettersen (Principal investigator)

Sigurd Pedersen

Financial/grant information:

The project is funded by Tromsø Forskningsstiftelse and UiT Norges Arktiske Universitet