PONE-D-25-04295Randomised Controlled Study on the Effects of Pilates Exercises in Soccer: Comparing Mat and Reformer Methods on Physical and Technical PerformancePLOS ONE

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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: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: No

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: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: 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

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:

The following are a number of issues that prevent the manuscript from being suitable for publication. I hope you will understand that all of them are made with the sole purpose of helping you to improve your work.

Introduction

- There is a lack of contextualisation of football in the work. It is not possible to present a work on improving the performance of a sport without going into the aspects of performance in depth.

- The bibliographic selection is scarce and outdated and does not provide relevant information to contextualise the study. There are a multitude of academic studies of great impact on performance in football that are not present in the article.

- The authors point out that there is no evidence of performance improvement in football players through Pilates and focus on the differences between two Pilates methods before testing whether Pilates itself improves performance regardless of the modality.

Material and methods

- The description of the sample indicates that the players are amateurs but does not indicate in which league they play, if they all belong to the same team, how much training load they have, and all the variables required in this type of study. To improve this point, I suggest that they be guided by published works in this respect in which all the characteristics of the participants and their conditions are indicated in detail.

- The sample is small and by convenience, which presents a very important limitation in the results.

- The authors state that the participants have no injuries or health problems, but do not specify how this data was obtained.

- It is also specified that the players train regularly, but the workload is not specified.

- This section is disorderly and chaotic, which makes it difficult to read.

- The exercise protocol specifies that the control group does not do any exercise while the other two groups do a protocol. This biases the results as the control group members receive less training than the groups receiving Pilates. In other words, there are two groups that do 6 sessions per week while the control group does only 3. This already generates differences, regardless of the techniques used.

- The authors state that the distribution of the data is normal, but do not specify the test used or add the test coefficients.

- It is not clearly specified how the analyses have been carried out, as there is a pre-post and a comparison between groups. If all this has been done at the same time, it is more advisable to use an ANCOVA.

- With the sample size, I consider it much more accurate to perform non-parametric tests such as the Kruskal Wallis analysis, as ANOVA tests require a larger number of subjects. In order to use a two-way ANOVA, the groups must consist of at least 15 subjects, otherwise the results may be compromised.

Results

- The results are confusing and disorganised

I hope that these indications will help you to improve your work.

Kind regards

Reviewer #2: Overview:

The article presents a randomized controlled trial comparing the effects of reformer pilates (RP) and mat pilates (MP) exercises on the physical performance and technical skills of soccer players. The study reveals that both pilates methods improve the performance of soccer players, but reformer pilates is more effective than mat pilates. The article provides valuable information, especially for those working in the field of sports science and training methodology.

Thank you for the interesting insights your article provides. The manuscript is well-written and deals with an important topic. I have thoroughly reviewed the manuscript and would like to make some suggestions for your review.

Abstract section:

- RP group (n=10; 20.60 ± 1.65), MP group (n=10; 19.40 ± 1.35), and control group (CG) (n=10; 20.10 ± 1.15).

- Add unit, example: (age 20.60 ± 1.65 years)

Introduction section:

- “Soccer players must have a high degree of athletic performance characteristics such as including balance, coordination, flexibility, agility, speed, endurance, and technical

skills in order to properly accomplish these activities. Pilates exercises are used as a training method to improve these features”

add a reference to this sentence.

- add a hypothesis sentence

method:

Learn more about the study design. When and in what order were the tests performed? Indicate what time of the day the training and tests were performed.

Learn more about soccer training

Learn more about the “German Agility” test protocol.

Reviewer #3: Thank you for the opportunity to review the manuscript entitled - Randomised Controlled Study on the Effects of Pilates Exercises in Soccer: Comparing Mat and Reformer Methods on Physical and Technical Performance

The study is interesting and addresses a topical scientific topic.

Recommendations for improving the content of the manuscript:

Introduction:

• To detail the connection between pilates and soccer with a focus on the physical and technical components of the study. To argue why pilates was chosen and not other aerobic gymnastics or stretching programs.

• To detail more specifically the novel aspects of the present study in relation to previous studies on the same topic.

Materials and Methods:

• Participant and Randomisation – this section should be restructured, as it contains repeated details.

• Study design – to add this subsection where the periodization of the study will be detailed: year, testing periods, and stages of the study (part of the content of this section is also found in the Introduction and Randomization)

Result – this section is well structured and interpreted.

Discussions:

- To add at the end of the Discussions - the practical implications and limits of the study based on the relevant results.

Conclusions

- They recommended separating the text from the Discussions and including the Conclusions section, as well as the separate section at the end of the study.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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Randomised Controlled Study on the Effects of Pilates Exercises in Soccer: Comparing Mat and Reformer Methods on Physical and Technical Performance

PONE-D-25-04295R1

Dear Dr. Baťalík,

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,

Julio Alejandro Henriques Castro da Costa

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 #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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

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 #2: No

Reviewer #3: 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 #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 #2: The article has undergone a comprehensive revision process, wherein all necessary corrections—including grammatical, stylistic, and content-related adjustments—have been meticulously addressed. Each modification has been applied in a manner consistent with scholarly standards, resulting in an improved and polished final version

Reviewer #3: The authors improved the manuscript with the title - ” Randomised Controlled Study on the Effects of Pilates Exercises in Soccer: Comparing Mat and Reformer Methods on Physical and Technical Performance” with the recommandations.

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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.

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 #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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