Training load monitoring in football

The daily monitoring of training sessions is now commonplace in soccer. Over the past decade, scientific focus on training monitoring in soccer has been on the usefulness of this practice, as determined via studies investigating its potential for injury risk reduction, relationship between training process and training outcome, and quantification of periodisation strategies. The strongest rationale for the monitoring of soccer players’ training should, however, be to assess whether players perform their training as planned. Soccer training is often categorised into internal and external loads with internals loads being the psycho/ physiological response to the external load. The two most popular approaches to internal training load measurement in soccer are heart rate monitoring and the post-training collection of Ratings of Perceived Exertion (RPE). External training loads are most frequently monitored via the use of microelectromechanical (MEMS; e.g., Global Positioning System [GPS]) system derived variables, such as distances covered, and time spent in speed zones of varying velocity. In this chapter, our intention is to explore some of the most pertinent scientific considerations when using heart rates, RPE and GPS-derived measures for monitoring soccer pitch-based training with an overarching aim of enhancing practice in this area.