PONE-D-21-30806Inter- and intra-microcycle external load analysis in female professional soccer players: a playing position approach.PLOS ONE

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PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

The article is good and presents interesting findings. Minor changes should be considered following the reviewers recommendations.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Abstract

Ok

Introduction

Line 44: Include what is sprint speed

At a general level, a more exhaustive review of the importance of load control in football and its relationship with different performance parameters would be interesting.

Material and Methods

The previous acute / chronic burden accumulated before the study period was taken into account.

If competitive microcycle 1 is taken, the preseason phase previously existed. Did the players start with a similar load or was it different from the start?

The level of the rivals, were they similar, higher or lower than the level of the team studied?

What order was the session in? In the Strength, Endurance, Speed sessions, what kind of general work was done?

What kind of tactical tasks did they consist of? What% of time corresponds to each task in the session?

A Strength / Speed session can alter the parameters of decelerations or high intensity actions. Was it quantified in some way to make homogeneous efforts?

In games, how many minutes did the players play? Was it a homogeneous time? Were the exposure times in training sessions / matches relativized?

What were they based on to establish 15 or 20 min of warm-up? Was there a 17-minute warm-up? Those 5 minutes of margin that was included?

Statical

Ok

Results

Ok

Discussion

Were there any injuries during the study period either in training or in the game? Was the accumulated load on the players taken into account to regulate their intervention in training sessions?

It would be interesting to talk in the discussion about the% change in load with respect to the microcycles and also observe, the% load that each training session represents with respect to the previous match. It may be a future line of research.

high SPD values at -1 to be tapering phase

Since there are no standardized thresholds, why do the authors use <21 km? Is this speed based on men's soccer data? Has the speeds been relativized based on the individualization of each player? It may be that the players have their sprint level at 17-18-19 km and not at 21. Was it taken into account?

Reviewer #2: Inter- and intra-microcycle external load analysis in female professional soccer players:

a playing position approach

First of all, the reviewer would like to thank the authors for their work and efforts in trying to improve sports science knowledge.

General comments to the authors

Overall, this is a nice study that the study could have important practical information integrated with inter-and intra-microcycle external load according to playing position in female professional soccer players. The authors are commended on their efforts thus far. The study is well designed and well-written, with a great original article. However, I suggest only small corrections and the authors should update the recent references about inter-and intra-microcycle external load according to playing position in professional soccer players. These corrections and studies will allow improving the manuscript.

Abstract

Line 28: I think that we do not need this information (i.e., Primera Iberdrola League)

Instead of this, … who played to the same team in a regional league or something like that

Line 29: I think that we do not need this information in abstract (WIMU PRO, RealTrack Systems, Almería, Spain)

Line 35: Both fitness and conditioning experts ….

Introduction section

Line 47: As such, fitness and conditioning staff …

Line 62: the authors should add this article for professional male

Clemente, F., Silva, R., Arslan, E., Aquino, R., Castillo, D., & Mendes, B. The effects of congested fixture periods on distance-based workload indices: A full-season study in professional soccer players. Biology of Sport, 37(1), 37-44.

Line 62: the authors should add this article for professional female

Strauss, A., Sparks, M., & Pienaar, C. (2019). The use of GPS analysis to quantify the internal and external match demands of semi-elite level female soccer players during a tournament. Journal of sports science & medicine, 18(1), 73.

Materials and Methods section

This section is well designed and well-written.

Participants

Line 105: As the same as in abstract

Results section

This section is well designed and well-written.

Discussion section

Overall the discussion is well-written and incorporates relevant literature. However, the authors could use these recent articles in discussion, if you want

Oliveira, R., Martins, A., Nobari, H., Nalha, M., Mendes, B., Clemente, F. M., & Brito, J. P. (2021). In-season monotony, strain and acute/chronic workload of perceived exertion, global positioning system running based variables between player positions of a top elite soccer team. BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation, 13(1), 1-10.

Oliveira, R., Brito, J. P., Martins, A., Mendes, B., Marinho, D. A., Ferraz, R., & Marques, M. C. (2019). In-season internal and external training load quantification of an elite European soccer team. PloS one, 14(4), e0209393.

Clemente, F. M., Silva, R., Ramirez-Campillo, R., Afonso, J., Mendes, B., & Chen, Y. S. (2020). Accelerometry-based variables in professional soccer players: comparisons between periods of the season and playing positions. Biology of Sport, 37(4), 389.

Hasan, U. C., Silva, R., & Clemente, F. (2021). Weekly variations of biomechanical load variables in professional soccer players: Comparisons between playing positions. Human Movement, 22(1), 19-34.

Silva, R., Ceylan, H. I., Badicu, G., Nobari, H., Carvalho, S. A., Sant’Ana, T., ... & Clemente, F. M. (2021). Match-to-match variations in external load measures during congested weeks in professional male soccer players. J. Men’s Health, 1-11.

Stevens, T. G., de Ruiter, C. J., Twisk, J. W., Savelsbergh, G. J., & Beek, P. J. (2017). Quantification of in-season training load relative to match load in professional Dutch Eredivisie football players. Science and Medicine in Football, 1(2), 117-125.

Figure and Tables

This section is well designed and well-written.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Inter- and intra-microcycle external load analysis in female professional soccer players: a playing position approach.

PONE-D-21-30806R1

Dear Dr. Rodríguez-Fernandez,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

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Kind regards,

Filipe Manuel Clemente, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Overall, this is a nice study that the study could have important practical information integrated with interand intra-microcycle external load according to playing position in female professional soccer players. The

authors are commended on their efforts thus far. Accepted

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If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No