Variations of season workload and well-being status among professional roller-hockey players: Full season analysis.

The aims of this research were (i) to describe variations in the internal load and well-being between regular (one official match) and congested (two official matches) weeks in senior professional roller-hockey players and (ii) to analyse the variations of these determinants, within weeks, for an entire season. Ten professional roller-hockey players (29.3 ± 4.8 years; 178.3 ± 6.4 cm; 78.0 ± 3.9 kg) from the Portuguese 1st league division participated in this study. Perceptions of fatigue, stress, delayed onset muscle soreness, and quality of sleep were recorded, and the Hooper index (1-7) was constructed with the sum of the four subjective ratings. In addition, the rating of perceived exertion (RPE) was collected approximately 30 min after each training session using Borg's CR-10. The volume of training (in minutes) was also collected, and the session-RPE (RPE multiplied by training volume) was calculated. Among congested weeks, in MD-2 (two days before a match), players spend less time training (-20.7%; 90%CI: -22,5; -18,9) and have lower levels of RPE (-20.0%; 90%CI: -25,0; -14,7) and internal training load (-38.2%; 90%CI: -41,9; -34,4) when compared with normal weeks. Similar results were found in both congested and normal weeks regarding the training process of the days classified as MD-3 (three days before a match). After pooling data from the overall season, significant within-weeks differences among different dimensions of the training sessions were observed. Higher values of internal training load (ITL), RPE and volume, were consistently observed on MD-3 than on MD-2 and MD-1. Findings of well-being revealed no meaningful differences (trivial-to-small) between type of weeks. Professional roller-hockey athletes presented overall adjustments of the load based on the number of games and the number of training days across weeks.