Season Suspension and Summer Extension: Unique Opportunity for Professional Team-Sport Athletes and Support Staff During and Following the COVID-19 Crisis

Thomas Huyghe; Stephen Bird; Julio Calleja-González; Pedro E Alcaraz

doi:10.3389/fspor.2020.00098

Season Suspension and Summer Extension: Unique Opportunity for Professional Team-Sport Athletes and Support Staff During and Following the COVID-19 Crisis

Front Sports Act Living. 2020 Jul 7:2:98. doi: 10.3389/fspor.2020.00098. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Thomas Huyghe¹, Stephen Bird², Julio Calleja-González³, Pedro E Alcaraz¹

Affiliations

¹ Research Center for High Performance Sport, Centro de Investigación en Alto Rendimiento Deportivo, Universidad Católica de Murcia, Murcia, Spain.
² School of Health and Wellbeing, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia.
³ Department of Physical Activity and Sports, Faculty of Education, Sports Section, University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain.

Abstract

Given the emergence of the COVID-19 outbreak, the official declaration of a global pandemic by the World Health Organization, and its consequential disruptions on the professional team sports landscape, it is the main objective of this brief opinion to help ensure that professional team-sport athletes and support staff remain aware as a society of some of the potential pitfalls - illustrated via negative but plausible detrimental scenarios. Finally, new ideas are introduced and evidence-based hypotheses are presented on the following five themes: periodization, exploration, virtual (at-home) training, player monitoring, and continued education, including return-to-competition preparation strategies following these exceptional times of uncharted territory.

Keywords: COVID-19; athlete monitoring; pandemic; periodization; physical preparation; team sports; virtual training.