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A football match lasting 90 minutes, and sometimes even longer, is a lot of effort for the human body. The players, although supported by supplements and nutrients, must regenerate after such an effort. And there is not always time for that, because the next meeting is in a moment. What is the risk of playing matches too often? – It is hard to see that you are overtrained – says Dr. Urszula Zdanowicz, specialist in sports orthopedics and traumatology from the Carolina Medical Center.
- There are three decisive matches of the European Championship ahead of us
- The games so far were mostly at a high level, the pace was high, and the players fought for a favorable result until the last seconds
- In addition, players playing during Euro 2020 were often exposed to heat
- How does recovery after such an effort look like? And what are the symptoms of overtraining?
- More information can be found on the Onet homepage.
Agnieszka Mazur-Puchała, MedTvoiLokony: What happens after the match, during which the players had to sweat for 90 minutes. Finally they go down to the cloakroom and…? What does the regeneration process look like after such an effort? And how long does it take for the body to return to normal?
Dr Urszula Zdanowicz: There are different habits in individual teams, but in many sports the body quickly cools down after such a great effort. Athletes enter an ice tub, which is 3-4 degrees Celsius. Such a rapid cooling of the warm muscles reduces their acidification. And this, in turn, accelerates regeneration.
Each match effort goes hand in hand with a series of micro-injuries to the muscles. We’ve lost all our glycogen stores that are needed for them to work, so it’s imperative to rebuild them. Reinforcements are also extremely important after the game. They are just as important as the ones players receive before the competition.
Let’s also talk about overtraining. After the situation with Christian Eriksen, it began to be said loudly that the players did not have enough time to rest, that their schedule is too full … What are the optimal intervals between one match and the other?
Sometimes it is literally a couple of days. Now many teams were struggling with trying to catch up with the season in June. They even played twice a week. The better the club, the better the situation, because the coach has more players at his disposal. He can rotate them, not let them onto the field for the entire match. Thanks to this, the player can at least some rest. But generally there are no hard and fast standards here. If you have to play, the players play.
A specialist in orthopedics and sports traumatology. He specializes in arthroscopic and reconstructive procedures of the knee and ankle joint (ligament reconstruction, cartilage repair, meniscus reconstruction, osteotomies, prostheses) and in soft tissue reconstructions, e.g. Achilles tendons. Scientific Director of the Carolina Medical Center. Member of the Faculty McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, where he conducts research on tendon regeneration.
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In the case of Eriksen, I do not know if it was due to exploitation. We may never know what really happened there. But these things just happen, even to young and healthy people. Someone may have an aneurysm in their head that they do not know about because it has no symptoms. Then it suddenly bursts and something terrible happens. Of course, there are some risk factors, but not everything is predictable. I wouldn’t blame everything on overtraining here. If you look back at the gears, similar situations also happened there. And now, wouldn’t it have happened if the competitor hadn’t been running? Nobody will check it with 100 percent. surely. It might as well happen in a line to the store rather than in a marathon. Top-level players have powerful medical staffs, they are investigated in a variety of ways, but it’s still impossible to detect everything.
What are the symptoms of overtraining? How do you know if a player is fed up?
Coaches know their players very well and can recognize when they are fed up. You can objectify some things – do blood tests, check the acidity of the body. We used to do the so-called creatinine curves. We checked not how high she jumps, but the pace at which a given player is able to lower her. This indicated the ability to regenerate, to withstand this and not another effort. There is a whole biomedical staff that helps the trainer decide whether to give an athlete more slack or not.
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Sometimes a player may be tired not physically but mentally. Not to have the strength and will to fight. Then it is also worth to let him go. And the role of the trainer is to know when to keep pushing and when to say “stop”. And a good trainer can do it even without research. He just looks and knows.
The footballer himself does not know that this is the moment?
It’s hard to see for yourself. There are few such athletes as, for example, Robert Korzeniowski, who practically trained himself. Each of us needs an external “whip”. Man is better at sport when he exceeds his limits. There are times during training when we do more than we can. It is a signal to our body that we need more in this area. And the coach has to be the one who knows when to say “stop”.
Also read:
- What can a footballer not do before the game? Does he really have to exercise restraint?
- What is an adductor? Where is the soleus muscle located? [ANATOMICAL AND FOOTBALL QUIZ]
- Eriksen was not the only one. Why do young, athletic footballers suffer a heart attack?
- How do footballers deal with losing? A sports psychologist explains
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