Leeds United Football Club and the Carnegie School of Sport are looking to recruit a highly motivated individual to a prestigious fees funded MRes with Leeds United Academy
- Fees funded MRes full-time
- 1 October start date
This is a unique opportunity for an enthusiastic and high-achieving individual looking to undertake a fully funded MRes in a vibrant research and professional sporting environment, helping innovate and drive current and future practices with a high level of scientific rigour within elite youth soccer.
The MRes studentship will include UK tuition fees being covered and a £4000 bursary to cover travel expenses.
Modelling the training-match-fatigue relationship in elite youth soccer players
Applicants are encouraged to discuss their proposals with the project lead Dr Stacey Emmonds ([Email Address Removed])
Elite youth soccer players complete a range of activities (e.g., locomotor and resistance based exercise) across a congested training and match schedule. Over time, this leads to fluctuating fatigue (acute training effects) and fitness (chronic training effects) statuses of players. As a result, practitioners collect a multitude of measures to monitor this overall process and inform the daily decision making of individual players. Frequent measurement of the activities of players during every training and match has been achievable using microtechnology (e.g., global positioning systems and accelerometers) devices for a number of years. However, historically, the monitoring of training effects has been either invasive, expensive or time inefficient within the constraints of senior professional soccer (e.g., regular fixtures) making it difficult to perform assessments at regular intervals for a large squad of players (Leduc et al., 2020)
Developments in methods to the evaluate players fatigue and fitness statuses through neuromuscular gym based assessments (Kakavas et al., 2021), maximal sprints (Lacome et al., 2020) or during training drill assessments (Lacome et al., 2018) have been proposed. The less invasive and time efficient nature of the assessments has increased the practical feasibility to collect fitness and fatigue responses at more regular time intervals during the season. However, the validity, reliability and sensitivity of these ‘invisible’ assessments across longitudinal time periods across the season has not been explored. Furthermore, it has not been considered how they are mediated by other factors, such as the current fitness status of the player (Johnston et al., 2014). Therefore, the purpose of this project is to explore the holistic measurement and modelling of the training process within elite youth soccer players, with consideration of how robust measurements of fitness and fatigue can be monitored as part of the normal daily training processes assessed through invisible monitoring methods. Secondly the project aims to explore how a range of factors may affect those responses (mediator) and ultimately influence match performances.
Desirable Applied Skills
• A keen interest in research and applied practice with the areas of Strength and conditioning and sports performance
• An understanding of sports science and sports medicine and their performance impact
• Desire to develop coaching and technical knowledge in a high performance environment.
• Self-motivated and able to take initiative and to work unsupervised.
• Flexible approach to work
• Excellent communication skills will be essential, both in terms of verbal communication and written communication.
• An understanding of Excel and Microsoft office,
• Up to date and relevant S&C knowledge and eagerness to learn
Further information on how to apply can be found here
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