Unlike most sports, team sports involve two or more players working together to achieve a common goal. These sports are a way to bring nations together and inspire sportsmanship. They are also a way to get people exercising and having fun. In addition, they are a popular way to earn money and become famous. Professional athletes earn millions of dollars from endorsements and advertising deals.
To determine whether there are similarities in how team sport athletes recover from competition, a systematic review was conducted. A total of 124 studies were reviewed and compared using different methods. These included studies that provided individual consent and competitors from a variety of team sports. The studies examined the recovery techniques used by team sport athletes, including stretching, cold water immersion, and contrast water therapy. The studies also investigated perceptions of recovery among athletes from various levels of competition. The results indicate that athletes use a wide range of recovery techniques. While the results may not represent the whole of Australia, they do demonstrate that team sport athletes engage in a variety of different strategies to recover from competition.
A systematic review of studies investigating the acceleration load of team sport athletes revealed that a large majority of these studies quantified acceleration events using counts. This is not surprising, given the practicality of count-based metrics. However, it is important to understand the limitations of these threshold-based metrics.
Athletes in team sports compete at various levels of competition, from local to international. These competitions are not necessarily uniform, as there are differences in rules and regulations. For example, in basketball, each team has five players. Athletes must carry the ball or throw it through a hoop to score points. Athletes must also take turns hitting against the pitcher of the opposing team. Other techniques used by teams include blocking, spiking, and setting.
The team sport athletes surveyed were largely male, based in northern Queensland, and competed in 0-600 min of competition per week. The most represented sport was state competition, with 9% of the studies reporting this. The least represented was international competition, with 2% of the studies identifying this. This indicates that there are not many studies that investigate recovery at a different level of competition.
There were five different competition levels surveyed: national, regional, local, and international. Athletes were recruited from 38 team sports, with 53% representing a local or regional competition. Approximately half of the studies surveyed utilized counts, while the remainder used GPS/GNSS devices. These are the most prevalent tracking technologies.
Although the study identified different techniques employed by team sport athletes, there was no consensus on whether these techniques were beneficial or detrimental to their performance. Athletes were found to use a variety of recovery strategies, including cold water immersion and active land-based recovery. There were no studies that outlined the minimum effort duration for each type of recovery technique. These are necessary considerations for future team sport research.
It is important to note that the MED is not a fixed length, but a subjective criterion. For example, an athlete would need to maintain acceleration for a minimum of 0.5 seconds to qualify for the MED.