The relationship between maximal oxygen uptake and repeated sprint performance indices in held hockey and soccer players

Background, The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship betwe en maximal oxygen uptake and repeated sprint performance in field hockey an d soccer players, Methods. Experimental design: a descriptive study on the aerobic-anaerobic performance of intermittent team game players.Setting: the study was conduc ted at the Sports Medicine and Research Centre, Participants: forty male na tional team game players (22.6+/-4.2 years; 1.73+/-0.07 m and 63.7+/-6.2 kg ) were involved in the study. Measures: all subjects completed a treadmill run test to exhaustion to determine maximal oxygen uptake and 8x40 m sprint s either on the held or running track to determine repeated sprint ability performance. Results. Body mass-normalised maximal oxygen uptake of 58.0+/-4.9 ml.kg(-1) .min(-1) of the group is comparable to values reported in the literature fo r team game players, No significant correlations were established between t he fastest 40 m sprint time and maximal oxygen uptake (r=-0.21 and -0.08, p >0.05). Moderate correlations were established between maximal oxygen uptak e and total time for the eight sprints (r=-0.346 and -0.323; p<0.05). Conclusions. Maximal oxygen uptake was not correlated with the fastest 40 m sprint time but was moderately correlated with total sprint time, Since th e shared variance between maximal oxygen uptake and total sprint time was o nly 12%, improving aerobic fitness further will only be expected to contrib ute marginally to improving repeated sprint performance of the team game pl ayers. It remains possible that a high level of aerobic fitness enhances ot her aspects of match play in games Like soccer and hockey.