PONE-D-22-29744The distribution of different intensity demanding scenarios in elite rink hockey players using an electronic performance tracking system.PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Carmona,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

==============================

ACADEMIC EDITOR:Dear authors,

Your work is quite interesting, new and deserves to be acknowledge. Nonetheless, there are points to improve before a furthrer recommendation. Please answer both reviewers point by point and highlight your changes in the manuscript.

BR

==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by January 20th of 2023. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Rafael Franco Soares Oliveira

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf.

2. Please provide additional details regarding participant consent. In the ethics statement in the Methods and online submission information, please ensure that you have specified (1) whether consent was informed and (2) what type you obtained (for instance, written or verbal, and if verbal, how it was documented and witnessed). If your study included minors, state whether you obtained consent from parents or guardians. If the need for consent was waived by the ethics committee, please include this information.

If you are reporting a retrospective study of medical records or archived samples, please ensure that you have discussed whether all data were fully anonymized before you accessed them and/or whether the IRB or ethics committee waived the requirement for informed consent. If patients provided informed written consent to have data from their medical records used in research, please include this information.

3. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability.

Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized.

Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access.

We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter.

4. Please include your full ethics statement in the ‘Methods’ section of your manuscript file. In your statement, please include the full name of the IRB or ethics committee who approved or waived your study, as well as whether or not you obtained informed written or verbal consent. If consent was waived for your study, please include this information in your statement as well. 

Additional Editor Comments:

Dear authors,

Your work is quite interesting, new and deserves to be acknowledge. Nonetheless, there are points to improve before a furthrer recommendation. Please answer both reviewers point by point and highlight your changes in the manuscript.

BR

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

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

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

**********

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

**********

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: General comments

This article explores the most demanding scenarios according to players’ positioning (internal or external players) and consider it from different intensity scenarios relative to the most demanding individual scenarios.

In general, the study is well written and provide important practical information regarding the physical demands of rink hockey. The study adds important practical knowledge to the field. Therefore, the authors should be congratulated for developing such work.

Despite that, I have some comments that should be addressed.

Specific comments

Abstract

L. 16-24. Please consider using a better connection between what research has explored and study aim. As it is, the idea that brings is that research explored a new approach to analyze physical performance, then the study aim is…

L.32-34. I would suggest having a conclusion more specific. That is, what coaches / sport scientists / strength and conditioning professionals can do with the information from exterior and interior players?

Introduction

In the first paragraph, I would recommend strengthening the importance of physical performance in rink hockey. That is, using this paragraph to characterize the physical demands, including of different playing positions and how understanding the game demands may help coaches to plan and prepare the training microcycle. In the second paragraph, then report to the most demanding scenarios.

L. 40. “Roller skating makes rink hockey a dynamic and fast sport that has relative average demands far greater than other indoor sports”. Please provide reference to support this sentence.

L.76-79. Please consider including study hypothesis.

Methods.

Subjects:

L90-91. Why did the goalkeepers not be included? Add additional rationale.

L.94-95. May the study findings be limited by the low sample size and mainly number of players per playing position (n=7 vs n =2?). It was performed the prior sample analysis to state how many players should the study include (G*Power)?

L.124-126. Include reference to state the corresponding thresholds.

Procedures

L103. What does it mean “same environmental conditions”?

Discussion

L.229-230. What interpretations do the authors make from these findings? Does this mean that this variable does not allow to discriminate winning and losing teams?

L.225 and 227. Can the authors be more specific? I mean, how will this information really help coaches in the practice? What will change? Adding this information will help readers in a better understanding.

L.228 – 234. I would recommend some caution in this information. While I understand the intention of compare with other sports, I would suggest doing it with external vs internal sports separately. First because Soccer and Rubgy had a larger number of players involved in the practice, in which, we know that contribute to different physical demands. Then, by the similarity between “environmental conditions”, basketball and futsal may be more identical, and thus, a higher emphasis should be placed on these two sports.

L.236. Figure 1, is it correct in this sentence? Or should be figure 3?

L240-241. May it be that players have lower distance to the nearest teammate and opponents (i.e., interior players), which as consequence, will require to accelerate or deceleration more often, not only as part of rebounding and receiving, but to press, defend, constrain the opposition, provide support in spaces where a higher presence of players may require more change-of-directions, stoppages, etc?

L244-246. Here I would consider, again, important to translate this to the practice. While coaches may tailor different training tasks according to players positioning, in this case, I would consider relevant to highlight how coaches should increase the acc dec demands for this position (which coaches may then suggest using previous research to adopt specific SSG that seems to encourage these movements).

L. 251-259. A follow up study from this information, would be trying to use X and Y data that WIMU makes available to understand which tactical configurations would contribute to such efforts. I mean, usually, the physical requirements of a match are related with tactical factors, such as ball being lost, exploring fast attacks after recovering the ball, etc…

L.261-265. Well done!

L.283 which tactical behaviour?

L.299. Please correct “method-ology”

Reviewer #2: Abstract

Is not clear “…demanding scenario” introduction that allow to highlight the problem, emphasizing the aims studied. If author describe position of playing as a covariable of analysis (stated in the objectives), is important to understand the playing position stratification, that support the results described under (“position-dependent…interior players…exterior players”). In the methods section authors should describe the major variables of analysis, defining the units. This will support the quantitative results that are required/desirable in the abstract section. The conclusion does not stated the final application of the results, regarding the impact on the training process.

Introduction

1. The problem around the already published data is not so clear: “However, the approach used to assess average physical demand underestimates peak intensities during indoor or outdoor matches…” (line 43-45);

2. Is still unclear in what way this new methods of assessment bring new data, allowing further application. Authors need to systemize what the other instruments give and what the new data collection will allow;

3. Authors described the utility of this data for “…sports medicine practitioners…” (line 58), and I think that this is important for “ sport coaches” or “sport scientists”, independently of the role in the sport team;

4. This section needs revision, namely structuring what we have in literature and what this paper brings of new, before describe the final purpose of the study.

Methods

1. We suggest to adjust the design study, as a observational study, with retrospective data collection (line 82-84);

2. About the sampling/subjects, it is not clear if the data is about repetitive measures along the matches, in the same players along the years of follow-up. If so, in the design is necessary to describe this study as a observational study supported in a cohort, with a time of follow up of….years;

3. The stratification in interior and exteriors needs explanation, namely about the characteristics that fit and define the playing position (line 94-95);

4. Please reword “consent” (line 100);

5. Because physical demands were truly dependent of the opponent, how the authors take into account this on match selection?

6. Please check on the manuscript the writing word “meters” and not “metres” (line 122), check in the all manuscript;

7. The authors need to be more clear about the cutpoints or the thresholds used because of the “skating limitation” and citing studies specific of the context or highlighting this on limitation section/discussion; Futsal and basketball, despite of the indoor profile, is not the same because of the skating specificity. How authors think about this, clarifying the readers.

8. The structure of the figure 1 is not clear in the manuscript. The top 3 description do not have into account the playing position? If no, what authors think about some bias on the results?

9. Consistent statistical analysis section in contrast with some confusion in describing the general procedures. Please revise to make more clear to the readers;

Results

1. Is important to be more clear about the units of the data collection, namely if the variables presented were an average per game (supported in the 18 games collected). We know that not every players have the same opportunities about the time of playing. How authors adjust the results regarding this aspect? This have an important implication in all the dimensions of external load, and the authors describe as a team (table 2).

2. Regarding the variables collected, it seems very underestimated results, regarding the most demanding scenarios. How authors explain this (table 2)?

3. For a common reader regarding high-intensity accelerations and high-intensity decelerations, the units of theses variables were not understandable. You read as counts per something. I suggest number of accelerations/decelerations in the intensity described above (methods section) per game, adjusted for the individual playing time;

4. The authors have so many results to summarise that make the manuscript confused for the reader; I suggest a clear paragraph of the evidence from each table, conferring a clear line of results.

Discussion

1. In the first paragraph of this section authors need to be more state to the point, clarifying the answer to the research topic. Between lines 213-215, please revise the paragraph about what authors real found;

2. I suggest clear messages regarding the differences between positions and the expression of the dependent variables on the game, describing the dimensions of the load per game, in this professional level. For example, distance covered per game, by position, at high intensity? Number of high intensity accelerations and decelerations per game, per position, adjusted by playing time? The fluctuation of the load across the professional game?;

3. Authors describe as “results of table 2…” in discussion section. Please revise to “results of this study” or “in this study we observer…” (line 223); Line 236 do not use the word “figure” in this section;

4. Between lines 225-227, this results were expected to help the coaches. How? Please describe, supported on your results, the impact on training process.

**********

6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

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

**********

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: review1.pdf

The distribution of different intensity demanding scenarios in elite rink hockey players using an electronic performance tracking system.

PONE-D-22-29744R1

Dear Dr. Daniel Fernández,

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.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Rafael Franco Soares Oliveira

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Dear authors,

Congratulations! My recommendation is to accept your work.

Best regards

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: (No Response)

**********

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: (No Response)

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

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: (No Response)

**********

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: (No Response)

**********

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: The authors have addressed all my comments. I am satisfied with the review. Congratulations.

P.S. - question regarding winning / losing it was my mistake. Sorry.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

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

**********