Post-match rest day placement and the shape of the week: external load distribution and injury occurrence in two elite football teams.
Lekatsas N, Buchheit M, Kekelekis A, Kellis E. Post-match rest day placement and the shape of the week: external load distribution and injury occurrence in two elite football teams. Sport Perf Sci Rep. 2026; Oct; #321:v1.
“Do you rest on MD+1 or MD+2?” I have been asked this question by almost every club I have worked with. There is some strong logic and building evidence supporting MD+2, but it also clearly depends on what you do with the rest of the week.
This new paper, led by Nikos Lekatsas with Afxentios Kekelekis and Eleftherios Kellis, gives that answer some data. Two Greek First Division teams, opposite choices, one season.
In real words: coaches programme football, and the GPS just records the footprint of that football
What struck me most:
👉 The rest day did not change the weekly dose. It changed the taper. The team resting on MD+1 still did 43% of its match accelerations on MD-1. The other team: 12%
👉 Each team’s training looked like its own match much more than like its rest day.
👉 After a day off, the first thing staff protected at MD-4 was sprinting (8% vs 45% of match sprint distance). Logical, if you ask me
A big thank you to Nikos for his patience through (many!) rounds of rewriting. It extends our earlier work on the question: to rest or not to rest (IJSPP 2023), the MD+2 freshness data with Ismail Çiçek (SPSR #295) and the 11 principles of microcycle periodization (SPSR #218).
More on martin-buchheit.net. Full paper free on sportperfsci.com (link in comments).
#Football #Periodization #Microcycle #SportsScience #SPSR
