Gymnastik- och idrottshögskolan, GIH

For all athletes, it is important to adjust training plans and competition schedule according to each individual's specific traits and situation. This is crucial in team sports, where players, despite being involved in the same sport, and even on the same team, may have very different physiological capacities and, also have completed a wide variety of work in both training and match situations. A first step towards being able to carry out individualized training is to accurately measure the amount of stress (physiological burden) for each individual. The purpose of the study was to create a comprehensive picture of the physical requirements of elite handball matches, and further investigate how the relationship between work load and physical capacity impacts performance.

Heart rate measurements have since decades been used to quantify the relative work, and GPS measurement as a tool for objective values has been available for outdoor sports for about ten years, but GPS is not possible to use indoors. We have used a new technology with a similar system for indoor use called Local Positioning System (LPS) (Kinexon Precision Technologies, Münich, Germany) to record and analyze the players’ motion during games, and we have combined that technology with data from accelerometry, gyroscope and heart rate measurements.

So far, 42 handball matches have been measured and analyzed, ranging from juniors (9 games U21 men's national team) to seniors, men and women, and both in Sweden’s highest league and between national teams (Women: 8 national and 7 international games; Men: 14 national and 4 international games).

A first "result" is that the categorization of motion patterns need to be adapted to each sport. For example, some moves that should be counted as accelerations in handball are not recognized by the system, simply because it has been adapted to the pattern of motion on the much larger soccer field. This is similarly important to realize when comparing results for handball’s physiological requirements reached using other technologies. In this presentation, we will in part discuss the future technological opportunities, and in part report descriptive results, including how fast and far the players move, as well as differences between men and women, between national and international games, and between juniors and seniors.