The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of the 11+ and HarmoKnee warm-up programs on performance measures in professional soccer players. Thirty-six male professional soccer players (age: 18.9 ± 1.4 years) were divided into 3 groups, the 11+, HarmoKnee and control group (n = 12 per group). The experimental groups performed the programs 3 times per week for 2 months (24 sessions), w...

BACKGROUND Adductor-related pain is the most common clinical finding in soccer players with groin pain and can be a long-standing problem affecting physical function and performance. Hip adductor weakness has been suggested to be associated with this clinical entity, although it has never been investigated. PURPOSE To investigate whether isometric and eccentric hip strength are decreased in s...

PURPOSE To determine the volume and degree of asymmetry of the rectus abdominis muscle (RA) in professional soccer players. METHODS The volume of the RA was determined using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in 15 professional male soccer players and 6 non-active male control subjects. RESULTS Soccer players had 26% greater RA volume than controls (P<0.05), due to hypertrophy of both the dom...

Soccer simulation is an effort to motivate researchers and practitioners to do artificial and robotic intelligence research; and at the same time put into practice and test the results. Many researchers and practitioners throughout the world are continuously working to polish their ideas and improve their implemented systems. At the same time, new groups are forming and they bring bright new th...

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Robot soccer is a standard problem used in Artiicial Intelligence for research on cooperating autonomous robots. This paper shows that simulation of robot soccer also is an excellent application for studying interactive and collaborative visualization. We have implemented a prototype robot soccer application that simulates a soccer match in real time and allows humans to interact with it in var...

Injury prevention has a fundamental role in professional soccer due to the high cost of recovery for players and the strong influence of injuries on a club’s performance. In this paper we provide a predictive model to prevent injuries of soccer players using a multidimensional approach based on GPS measurements and machine learning. In an evolutive scenario, where a soccer club starts collectin...

This research investigated stereotype threat effects on women's performance in sports and examined the mediation of this effect by achievement goals. The influence of two stereotypes-relative to the poor athletic ability and the poor technical soccer ability of women-were studied. Fifty-one female soccer players were randomly assigned to one of three conditions, introducing the task as diagnost...

Injuries have a great impact on professional soccer, due to their large influence on team performance and the considerable costs of rehabilitation for players. Existing studies in the literature provide just a preliminary understanding of which factors mostly affect injury risk, while an evaluation of the potential of statistical models in forecasting injuries is still missing. In this paper, w...

Distributed play-based approaches have been proposed as an effective means of switching strategies during the course of timed, zero-sum games, such as robot soccer. In this paper, we empirically show that different plays have a significant effect on opponent performance in real robot soccer games. We also consider the problem of distributed play recognition: classifying the strategy being playe...