PONE-D-23-04228Relationships between wellness, internal and external intensity measures from a European professional male soccer teamPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Oliveira,

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PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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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

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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: Dear authors:

Overall, the study aimed to investigate within-microcycle variations of professional soccer players, analyzing the relationships between wellness and load demands, as well as the relationships between match demands and wellness of MD+1 and MD-1. The results showed that wellness variables remained similar across all sessions, except for MD+1 where lower values were found. The study also found that the lowest internal and external intensity values were found on MD-1 while the highest were found on MD. These findings are consistent with previous studies that have also found lower values on MD-1 and higher values on MD-5, MD-4, and MD-3.

The authors suggest that the reduction in wellness on MD-1 may be associated with a tapering period aimed at decreasing fatigue and increasing recovery to achieve better performance in the following match. The authors also suggest that the results of this study may help coaches and practitioners to better plan and monitor training loads and recovery strategies for professional soccer players.

However, it should be noted that the study has some limitations, such as the small sample size and the fact that only one team was studied. Therefore, further research with larger samples and multiple teams is needed to confirm the findings of this study. Additionally, future studies could investigate the impact of different tapering strategies on player performance and wellness. In the below you can find my comments to improve some sections:

Title

Based on the content of the study, a possible suggestion for the title could be "Relationships between internal and external load demands and wellness in professional soccer players across microcycles".

Introduction

It is well written. There is no comment in this section.

Method:

Participant section:

Overall, the participant section is well written and provides relevant information about the sample size, characteristics of the players, and inclusion criteria. However, as a reviewer, I would suggest adding more information about the recruitment process and how participants were selected for the study. It would also be useful to know if any players were excluded from the study and for what reasons.

Additionally, the authors could provide more information on how they ensured compliance with the eligibility criteria, such as how they tracked participation in training sessions and wellness and training intensity reports. This information would increase the transparency of the study and help readers understand the validity of the data collected.

Finally, the authors should clarify whether the power calculations were conducted prior to or after data collection. If it was done prior to data collection, it would be useful to know how the authors arrived at the effect-size of 0.2 and the correlation coefficient of 0.7 used in the calculations.

External intensity quantification & Internal intensity quantification section:

The methods section regarding the external and internal intensity quantification is well described and adequately detailed. However, it could be improved by providing more information on the interpretation of the results obtained through the GPS Vector S7. For instance, the authors could explain how the measured variables, such as high-speed running and sprinting, relate to the overall physical performance of the players. Moreover, it would be helpful to mention the standard deviation or range of values for each variable to provide a better understanding of the players' physical demands during training and matches. Finally, the authors could also provide information on how the CR-10 Borg’s scale is typically used to assess RPE in soccer players, and how session-RPE is calculated based on this scale.

Discussion

As a general view, here are a few suggestions for improving the conclusions section:

Provide more context: While the conclusions do summarize the findings of the study, they could benefit from additional context. It would be helpful to briefly explain why the study findings are significant and what implications they have for future research or practice.

Be more specific: The conclusions mention several associations between intensity and wellness variables, but they do not provide specific details or effect sizes. Including more specific information would help readers better understand the significance of these relationships.

Discuss future directions: Given the findings of the study, it would be valuable to suggest areas for future research or potential interventions that could be developed to address the identified relationships between intensity and wellness variables.

Reviewer #2: Thank you to the authors for putting together this comprehensive manuscript. It is very interesting with very relevant and practical findings; however, the quality of writing needs to be improved significantly. See some comments below:

Abstract

• Indicate which measures are IL and which are EL

• Change ap-plied to “applied”

• Rephrase to: “While MD-1 presented the lowest internal (variables) and external load (variables) values, MD presented the highest values”

• When you say “time of the session” – are you referring to the time of day or session duration?

Intro

• Line 2: “…is a common practice to reduce to the risk of injury and overtraining.”

• Line 3: “…practitioners employ periodization strategies by adjusting training intensities considering the previous sessions.”

• Line 14: strengthen topic sentence of this paragraph -

• Line 15: begin sentence with “specifically”

• Paragraph 2 needs to be strengthened with improved writing quality

• Line 29: add a comma after session and after wellness perception

• Line 32: briefly note what the relationship outcome was “This was evident in a recent study on youth soccer players, where sleep and intensity…” � discuss in that one sentence was the main outcome was

Methods

• Design – you only mention sleep, but you monitored more wellness variables also. Either list them all here or introduce all in the later section

• Rephase: “..before each training/match session through a specifically designed google form.”

• The questionnaire uses a Likert scale ranging from 1-5, in which athletes were asked to rate their fatigue, sleep quality, muscle soreness, stress, and mood (5=very fresh, very restful, very great, very relaxed, and very positive mood, respectively; 1=always tired, insomnia, very sore, highly stressed, and highly annoyed/irritable/down, respectively). All players were already familiarized with the questionnaire from the previous season.”

• Combine lines 88 and 92 – very repetitive, just throw in the 10hz sampling session in line 88

• Lines 96-97: delete the authors from the text and just include their reference as validation

• Line 106: delete this topic sentence

• Line 108: change during to from

Results

• Table 2: add nr in the legend

• Lines 130-132: when you say wellness variables including sleep quality and fatigue, are those the only 2 wellness variables? Or are there others? This is unclear by the phrasing of the sentence. Please rephrase to be more clear

• Line 132: didn’t you just say this in the previous sentence?

• Line 133-134: again, repeating the last 2 sentences you wrote – synthesize, as this is very repetitive

• Even though all numbers are displayed in Table 2, please still include actual numbers in the results section. Don’t need every single number, but some means or p values or effect sizes would strengthen this section

• Please rephrase “time of session” to “session duration” throughout your paper

• This reads moreso like a list to me – I think by adding numbers as I suggested above will help break that up.

• For tables 4 and 5 results, why not run a regression for highly correlated variables?

Discussion

• Line 226: which wellness variables were lower in MD+1?

• If citing an SR, discuss/cite the studies individually

• Appears that discussion is out of order – you discuss aim 3 before aim 2

• Significant improvements in writing is needed

Reviewer #3: Congratulations to the authors. But some minor adjustments need to be made;

- Hypotheses should be written more clearly and precisely.

-Line 46. “This was an observational study design” please explain and show references.

-Line 46-47, sleep quality and duration?? You can use welness measures instead of sleep quality and duration.

Line- 48, give more details about the content of the 70 training sessions?

Line 49-50, please give more details about the reseacrh design? Which microcycles were chosen?

-In the Methods section, Please explain which sampling method was used to create my sample group. It is based on scientific source.

-The data collection process cannot be detailed in method section. Where, by whom, and in what time of day the data were collected. It should be detailed.

-Please give more details about eligibility criteria.

Line 61, a European soccer team or its country? Which league?

Line 59-60, body mass, height, and fat mass? How did you determine this? Please add fat free mass also. Please add the explanations in methods section. Were these measurements made on an empty stomach or on a full stomach? What time of day was it done? Were the participants informed about the criteria recommended by the ACSM before the measurements? Show references for these all measurements and explanations.

-In the resuts section, there are sentences that repeat each other. Please revise them.

-Please develop practical applications section of the study.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes: halil ibrahim ceylan

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Attachments

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Submitted filename: PONE-D-23-04228.docx

PONE-D-23-04228R1The relationship between wellness and training and match load in professional male soccer playersPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Oliveira,

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.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 26 2023 11:59PM. 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,

Bruno Emanuel Nogueira Figueira

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Dear authors, thanks for the revisions made addressing both reviewers' comments. After carefully checking changes and improvements I have noticed some minor issues that should be implemented in a minor revision. Please, I encourage to revise the manuscript according to the following minor issues:

- L142-143, please cite the SPSS software following the company criterion: https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/how-cite-ibm-spss-statistics-or-earlier-versions-spss

- Consistency is required when using abbreviations (e.g., effect size: ES). Most of the times, the authors used “effect size” and a few times the abbreviation HA. If the intention is to use the abbreviation, on the first occasion write in full “effect size”, indicating the abbreviation in parentheses (ES). Then, always use ES.

- In table 1 abbreviations should appear using the presentation of tables 2 and 3, W: week.

- Provide DOI to all references: e.g. Reference 15, 22 and 23

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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

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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

Reviewer #3: 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: Based on the comments, the authors have made the necessary corrections in the article. Congratulations to the authors for their valuable work.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for your updates to this paper. My remaining comment is for the results section, particularly for table 2. In the written text you note effect sizes, but there is no data on effect sizes in the table. Please include these numbers in the written text.

Reviewer #3: All corrections were made by Authors..my decision is the article can be published in current form. Congratulations to all authors...

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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.

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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

Reviewer #3: Yes: Halil ibrahim ceylan

**********

[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.

The relationship between wellness and training and match load in professional male soccer players

PONE-D-23-04228R2

Dear Dr. Oliveira,

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.

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Kind regards,

Bruno Emanuel Nogueira Figueira

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: