Recovery time variation during sprint interval training impacts amateur soccer players adaptations - a pilot study

The objective of the present study was to investigate the selected performance adaptations of amateur soccer players to 2 different running-based sprint interval training (SIT) protocols with different recovery intervals and work-rest ratios (1:5 & 1:1). Twenty-three subjects (age 21.4 ± 1.1 years; height 175.4 ± 4.7 cm; body mass 69 ± 6.4 kg) participated in the study. Before the 6-weeks training period, participants completed 3-weeks of low-intensity training preparation. Subsequently, the pre-tests (anthropometric measurements, repeated sprint test [12 × 20-m with 30-s recovery intervals], Yo-Yo_IRT1 & Yo-Yo_IRT2 and treadmill VO_2max test) were conducted. Thereafter, participants were randomly divided into 3 sub-groups (1 - SIT with 150 s recovery intervals [SIT150, n = 8]; 2 - SIT with 30 s recovery intervals [SIT30, n = 7]; and 3 - control group [CG, n = 8]). SIT150 and SIT30 training groups completed sprint interval training (2-days/week; 30-s all-out running, 6-10 repetition with 150 s recovery intervals for SIT150 and 30 s for SIT30 groups, respectively), a soccer match (1-day) and routine soccer training (3-days) per week. The CG attended only routine training sessions and the soccer-match (4-days). The study experiments and the trainings were conducted during off-season. Yo-Yo_IRT1, Yo-Yo_IRT2, and VO_2max were significantly improved both in SIT30 and SIT150 (p < 0.05) groups. Yo-Yo_IRT1 and VO_2max were also significantly improved in CG (p < 0.05). Both the SIT150 and SIT30 training were shown to improve Yo-Yo_IRT1, Yo-Yo_IRT2 and VO_2max performance compared to the control group, nevertheless, SIT150 was more efficient in improving the Yo-Yo_IRT1, Yo-Yo_IRT2 than SIT30. The authors of this study suggest using SIT150 to induce more effective performance outputs in amateur soccer players.