Elsevier

Physiology & Behavior

Volume 227, 1 December 2020, 113148
Physiology & Behavior

How has COVID-19 modified training and mood in professional and non-professional football players?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2020.113148Get rights and content

Highlights

  • COVID-19 reduced the sleep quality, duration and intensity of training.

  • Mood states can affect sleep quality, sleep hours, and rated perceived exertion.

  • Emotional Intelligence is related to training behaviours in isolation periods.

  • Isolation period has not affected men and women equally.

Abstract

Background

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has restricted freedom of movement with several countries ‘locked down’ worldwide. During this isolation period or quarantine, habits have been modified. This might have had negative effects on physiological variables but also influenced numerous emotional aspects, especially in elite athletes, which can have a negative impact on training and sleep quality, affecting their performance.

Methods

175 Spanish professional and non-professional association football players answered an online survey about demographic and training habits, as well as two validated questionnaires to assess psychological variables (POMS and WLEIS-S).

Results

The results showed that the confinement period reduced the load of training (p < 0.01), and modified the sleeping behaviour (both, sleep time (p < 0.05) and quality (p < 0.001)) across soccer players. Higher emotional intelligence (EI) values were positively related to training variables and strongly correlated with the mood. Interestingly, athletes’ mood was affected differently depending on gender.

Conclusion

We found that confinement period affects both, training load and recovery process and that mood states and EI could predict the training variables and performance of top-level football players.

Keywords

Soccer
Behaviour
POMS
Emotional intelligence
Performance

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