Physical and physiological demands of inter-county Camogie across competitive match-play

The quantification of competitive demands during match-play is imperative to enable sport science practitioners to improve decision making throughout the training process and optimise performance, health, and well-being of the athletes. The purpose of this research was to investigate the physical and physiological demands of Camogie inter-county competition to enhance the optimisation of performance in an amateur sports environment. Twenty-eight participants participated in this research project with both internal and external loads measured during training and competition for two seasons. Participants were analysed GPS (10-Hz) and HR monitors (2.4-GHz). The thesis demonstrated that inter-county Camogie players covered a TD (m ± SD) of 6040 ± 628 m, RD of 83 ± 13 m·min-1 and maximum speed of 25 ± 1 km·h-1. Furthermore, the players covered a mean sprint distance of 214 ± 112 m and 14 ± 6 sprints. Players’ HRmean and HRmax was 138 ± 23 b·min-1 and 164 ± 20 b·min-1, respectively. There were significant decrements between halves in TD, RD, maximum speed, HRmax, HSR, sprinting, HRmax & HRmax %. Additionally, there were significant decrements observed between halves in total number of accelerations, accelerations in zones 1-4, total distance of accelerations, and acceleration distance in zone 2-4. There were significant decrements in the total number of decelerations, number of decelerations in zone 2-4 and total deceleration distance. From a between competition perspective, there were also significant increases between competitions in walking, VHSR, sprinting, and decelerations between competitions. This information may aid practitioners to utilise unique physical and physiological demands of Camogie to replicate the demands of the game and develop positional specific return to play and performance protocols. Furthermore, this information could enable players to receive an appropriate external and internal training load stimulus and provide useful feedback in maintaining or improving fitness capacities in preparation for the demands of inter-county Camogie match-play. This information can also aid practitioners in designing position specific sprinting and conditioning programmes to better prepare Camogie players for the demands of competition.