Playerload of beach handball players during competitions

INTRODUCTION:Beach handball (BH) games are characterized by high intensity activities (Pueo,2017;Bělka,2015) and few studies have been published on performance analysis of BH (Skandalis 2017;Navarro 2018;Zapardiel 2018a, 2018b;Gkagkanas 2018a,2018b;Cobos 2018a,2018b;Jimenez- Olmedo,2019).To best of our knowledge, only 2 studies investigated the physical demand (Cobos,2011;Pueo,2017) of BH players during matches but no information about the PlayerLoad (PL) of BH is available. Hence, the aim of this study was to identify the external (EL) and internal (IL) PL of youth BH players during official matches. METHODS:11 players from the same BH team competed during 7 matches of the YAC17 BH tournament. For the EL, GPS units (Catapult Optimeye S5 and T6, Australia) have been used for PL and PL/minute, whereas for the IL, Polar© H7 heart rate (HR) monitors (Polar©, Kempele, Finland) were used. For a subjective assessment of the IL, Rating of Perceived Exertion (S-RPE) was administered after each game and then the Session-RPE(S-RPE) was calculated. Means and standard deviations were calculated for all the variables. RESULTS:EL was lower (PL:100.3±15.8AU;PL/min:3.8±0.7AU/min) than basketball matches (PL:449±118AU;PL/min:4.35±1.09 AU/min)(Fox,2018).The IL(% of time spent in each HR zone, according to Edward’s method) was higher(zone 1:24.8±2;zone 2:22.2±5.2;zone 3:18.8±5.8;zone 4:24.3±5.6;zone 5: 14.4±6.1) than the results(zone 1:19.1±16.5;zone 2:25.5±12;zone 3:26±11.5;zone 4:20.3±14.4;zone 5:8.9±14.6)showed by Pueo(2017) about BH players. For the S-RPE results have been 123.8±21.5AU, lower than reported by Fox (2018) (638 ± 194AU). CONCLUSION: This was the first study aimed to describe the IL and EL of a BH team; therefore, further research is needed to compare these values with other samples of BH players.