Relationship between internal load indicators in a 3-a-side small-sided game in young soccer players

Abstract

The main purpose of this work was to verify if there was a relation between players' perceived effort (RPE Borg-10) and the percentage of reserve heart rate (%HRres) as methods to monitor the internal load during small sided games (SSG) in U-16, U-14 and U-12 soccer players. A group of 36 young soccer players from the same club, divided into three categories: U-12 (mean ± ds: 11.76 ± 0.31 years), U-14 (12.78 ± 0.37) and U-16 (15.25 ± 0.53), participated in this study. All of them performed two SSG with a duration of 4 sets of 4 minutes, with a 3-minute rest period between them. Heart rate (HR) was constantly recorded and each participant's perceived effort (RPE Borg-10) was recorded after each of the series of both SSG. Repeated-measure ANOVA was performed to compare mean inter-series values of the different variables, whereas one-way ANOVA was run to compare mean values of each variable during the complete SSG between the different categories. Pearson correlation analysis was also used to verify the relationship between %HRres and RPE at different times and according to the categories. From these analyses, a moderate and statistically significant relationship (r=.41; p<0.05) was derived between soccer players' RPE and %HRres during SSG. These results confirm that RPE is a practical tool when evaluating SSG internal load in the first formative stages in soccer.