Track-and-field performance fluctuates week to week under the joint influence of training load, recovery

The gap

Evidence profile

Sourced from the future work and abstract of the source papers, classified as general, drawn from work published between 2024 and 2026, spanning 2 journals. Those papers have been cited 5 times in total.

Supporting evidence — 3 representative gaps

• Dismissing the idea that basketball is a “contactless” sport: quantifying contacts during professional gameplay (2024) · Frontiers in Sports and Active Living · cited 5× · doi

  should comprehensively investigate this aspect. Whereas our study utilized video analysis to identify player it is important to acknowledge that quantifying the contacts, associated load resulting cannot be accomplished solely through video analysis. Video analysis provides valuable visual data on the occurrence and nature of lacks the capacity to contacts during gameplay. However, these impacts of measure the physiological or biomechanical from these contacts it load resulting from player contacts on players directly. Micro-technical devices such as LPS or GPS offer a potential supplementary method for quantifying the contacts during basketball gameplay in future research. Previous studies have demonstrated the utility of accelerometers or specific load metrics in describing body contacts and assessing physical loads encountered by athletes across different sport types (86–88). In addition to video analysis and micro-technical devices, utilizing psychological measures such as ratings of perceived exertion or physiological measures such as heart rate variability offer other valuable methods for quantifying the internal load response resulting from player contacts (89). Furthermore, future examinations of intra- and interindividual variabilities in fatigue markers (e.g., creatine kinase or urea) could enhance the understanding of physical contacts on the dynamics of internal load responses. Implementing such methods provides a valuable complement to the video-based quantification of physical load, enhancing the understanding of the holistic impact of player contacts on athletes’ performance and well-being in professional basketball.

  generalfuture work
  Keywords: contacts load video player quantifying resulting valuable physical provides gameplay physiological micro technical devices offer
• The analytics–practice gap: why sports data fails to translate into coaching decisions (2026) · Frontiers in Sports and Active Living · doi

  A third issue is the fragmented organization of performance data. In many applied environments, technical, tactical, physical, and medical information are collected through different systems and interpreted by different staff members. Event data may describe passes, shots, turnovers, and defensive actions. Tracking data may describe spacing, speed, acceleration, and team shape. Wearable sensors may describe external load, while wellness or medical information may provide insight into fatigue, soreness, or readiness. Each source can be useful, but coaching decisions often require these sources to be interpreted together rather than separately. This fragmentation can lead to incomplete or misleading interpretations. Reduced sprint distance may appear to be a physical issue if viewed only through workload data, but it may also reflect tactical role, defensive block height, available space, or deliberate energy management. Similarly, lower passing accuracy may suggest technical underperformance, but may also reflect opponent pressure, build-up structure, or a tactical choice to play more progressive passes. In both cases, interpretation depends on the relationship between physical output, tactical context, technical execution, and coaching intention. This issue becomes especially important when performance is examined across different time scales. A week-to-week decline in high-intensity running may require immediate attention if it coincides with fatigue, fixture congestion, or reduced recovery. Across a month, the same pattern may be more relevant to training adaptation, tactical consistency, or changing positional demands. Across a season, it may indicate a shift in playing style, player development, or cumulative workload risk. The same variable can therefore carry different practical meanings for short-term depending on whether long-term or preparation, medium-term monitoring, performance planning. is being used it integrated integration of physical, Research on performance and match analysis supports the need for more interpretation, particularly when analysis aims to explain performance rather than only describe isolated events (22). Sarmento et al. argued that team ball sport research needs stronger technical, tactical, and psychosocial dimensions to better explain performance and bridge the gap between theory and practice (8). This point is directly relevant to applied analytics. A coach rarely needs to know only whether a player ran less, passed worse, or occupied a different space. The more useful question is why this occurred, whether it matters for the next decision, and what shou

  generalfuture work
  Keywords: performance tactical different technical physical describe issue across term whether applied medical information interpreted passes
• Predicting athletic performance in track and field athletes based on wearable physiological and psychological indicators: an interpretable machine learning study (2026) · Frontiers in Physiology · doi

  Track-and-field performance fluctuates week to week under the joint influence of training load, recovery, autonomic regulation, and psychological readiness, and wearables now enable continuous physiological monitoring; however, whether bodily signals and readiness markers contribute differently to performance prediction across technical and physical events remains unclear.

  generalabstractevidence 3/5
  Keywords: performance week readiness track field fluctuates joint influence training load recovery autonomic regulation psychological wearables

Questions about this gap