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The ATP/PC
English researchers Reilly and Thomas (1976) investigated the patterns of football play in the old first division. They found that a player would change activity every 5-6 secs, and on average he would sprint for 15m every 90 seconds. They found the total distance covered varied from 8 to 11 km for an outfield player - 25 per cent of the distance was covered walking, 37 per cent jogging, 20 per cent running below top speed, 11 per cent sprinting and 7 per cent running backwards. Ohashi and colleagues, researching football in Japan, confirmed these findings, showing 70 per cent of the distance was covered at low to moderate pace below 4 m/s, with the remaining 30 per cent covered by running or sprinting at above 4 m/s. Thus, for example, if a football player covers 10 km in total, around 3 km will be done at fast pace, of which probably around 1 km will be done at top speed.
The pattern of football play has also been expressed in terms of time. Hungarian researcher Peter Apor and the Japanese researchers both describe football as comprising sprints of 3-5 secs interspersed with rest periods of jogging and walking of 30-90 secs. Therefore, the high intensity with a very low duration. The aerobic system will be contributing most when the players' activity is low to moderate, ie, when they are walking, jogging and running below maximum. Conversely, the ATP-PC and anaerobic glycolysis systems will contribute during high-intensity periods. These two systems can create energy at a high rate and so are used when intensity is high.
The above research has described the average patterns of play during football and from this we can reasonably deduce when each of the energy systems is contributing most. However, now we need to establish just how important each energy system is for footballing success.
English researchers Reilly and Thomas (1976) investigated the patterns of football play in the old first division. They found that a player would change activity every 5-6 secs, and on average he would sprint for 15m every 90 seconds. They found the total distance covered varied from 8 to 11 km for an outfield player - 25 per cent of the distance was covered walking, 37 per cent jogging, 20 per cent running below top speed, 11 per cent sprinting and 7 per cent running backwards. Ohashi and colleagues, researching football in Japan, confirmed these findings, showing 70 per cent of the distance was covered at low to moderate pace below 4 m/s, with the remaining 30 per cent covered by running or sprinting at above 4 m/s. Thus, for example, if a football player covers 10 km in total, around 3 km will be done at fast pace, of which probably around 1 km will be done at top speed.
The pattern of football play has also been expressed in terms of time. Hungarian researcher Peter Apor and the Japanese researchers both describe football as comprising sprints of 3-5 secs interspersed with rest periods of jogging and walking of 30-90 secs. Therefore, the high intensity with a very low duration. The aerobic system will be contributing most when the players' activity is low to moderate, ie, when they are walking, jogging and running below maximum. Conversely, the ATP-PC and anaerobic glycolysis systems will contribute during high-intensity periods. These two systems can create energy at a high rate and so are used when intensity is high.
The above research has described the average patterns of play during football and from this we can reasonably deduce when each of the energy systems is contributing most. However, now we need to establish just how important each energy system is for footballing success.