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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Injury Prevention and Rehabilitation
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2024.1466118
This article is part of the Research Topic Epidemiology of Orthopaedic Sports Trauma and Injuries View all articles

Analyzing Exercise-to-Rest Ratios in U19 American Football European Championship: Implications for Team Success and Injury Prevention

Provisionally accepted
Valentin Prioul Valentin Prioul 1Jean Slawinski Jean Slawinski 2Steeve Guersent Steeve Guersent 3Laure Le Monnier Laure Le Monnier 4Vincent GOEB Vincent GOEB 4Florent Krim Florent Krim 5Philippe Lopes Philippe Lopes 6Pierre-Marie Leprêtre Pierre-Marie Leprêtre 7*
  • 1 University of Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens, Picardy, France
  • 2 Institut national du sport, de l'expertise et de la performance (INSEP), Paris, Île-de-France, France
  • 3 fédération française de Football Américain, Paris, France
  • 4 Centre Hospitalier Universitaire (CHU) d'Amiens, Amiens, Picardy, France
  • 5 Service de Réadaptation Cardiovasculaire, Centre Hospitalier de Corbie, Corbie, France
  • 6 University of Évry Val d'Essonne, Evry, France
  • 7 UFR-STAPS, Laboratoire CETAPS, Université de Rouen, Rouen, France

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The teams' collective playing strategy rather than the individual player attitudes could explain event outcome and risk of injuries. To examine the playing style of European teams and compare it to the USA, we analyzed 12 matches from the U19 European championship of American Football. We characterized each team by their running-passing activities ratio during the offensive phase: running (RUN), passing (PASS), or balanced (BAL). Our results showed that the BAL style of play accurately described 75% of European teams (n=6). The remaining two national teams adopted either the RUN or PASS style of play. This finding is similar to what was observed in NCAA Division IA. All RUN style teams had a higher percentage of rushing plays (80.7±9.7%) compared to PASS (33.0±14.7%) and BAL teams (46.0±0.8%) (p<0.05). The mean playing time for RUN and PASS teams was longer than the average duration of plays for BAL teams (p<0.05). The mean duration of plays ranged from 5.3±1.9 to 5.7±2.1 seconds, with a significant style of play effect (p<0.05). Rest duration for BAL teams (46.7±44.1 sec) was shorter than that of RUN (55.9±34.7 sec) and PASS (54.5±32.9 sec) teams (p<0.05). Finally, the European top final team was the team that was able to shift their game style during the tournament and presented a low coefficient of variation in offensive plays per drive. Based on the running-passing activities ratio, the video match analysis can provide a foundation for the strength and conditioning program for long-term athlete development and injury prevention.

    Keywords: team sport, performance, Video Analysis, Young Players, running-passing activity ratio, Football

    Received: 17 Jul 2024; Accepted: 04 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Prioul, Slawinski, Guersent, Le Monnier, GOEB, Krim, Lopes and Leprêtre. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Pierre-Marie Leprêtre, UFR-STAPS, Laboratoire CETAPS, Université de Rouen, Rouen, 80025, France

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