312 www.IJSPP-Journal.com ORIGINAL INVESTIGATION International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 2013, 8, 312-318 © 2013 Human Kinetics, Inc. Montgomery is with St Kilda Football Club, St Kilda, VIC, Australia. Hopkins is with Sport and Recreation, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand. The Effects of Game and Training Loads on Perceptual Responses of Muscle Soreness in Australian Football Paul G. Montgomery and Will G. Hopkins Australian Football is an intense team sport played over ~120 min on a weekly basis. To determine the effects of game and training load on muscle soreness and the time frame of soreness dissipation, 64 elite Australian Football players (age 23.8 ± 1.8 y, height 183.9 ± 3.8 cm, weight 83.2 ± 5.0 kg; mean ± SD) recorded percep- tions of muscle soreness, game intensity, and training intensity on scales of 1–10 on most mornings for up to 3 competition seasons. Playing and training times were also recorded in minutes. Data were analyzed with a mixed linear model, and magnitudes of effects on soreness were evaluated by standardization. All effects had acceptably low uncertainty. Game and training-session loads were 790 ± 182 and 229 ± 98 intensity-minutes (mean ± SD), respectively. General muscle soreness was 4.6 ± 1.1 units on d 1 postgame and fell to 1.9 ± 1.0 by d 6. There was a small increase in general muscle soreness (0.22 ± 0.07–0.50 ± 0.13 units) in the 3 d after high-load games relative to low-load games. Other soreness responses showed similar timelines and magni- tudes of change. Training sessions made only small contributions to soreness over the 3 d after each session. Practitioners should be aware of these responses when planning weekly training and recovery programs, as it appears that game-related soreness dissipates after 3 d regardless of game load and increased training loads in the following week produce only small increases in soreness. Keywords: DOMS, monitoring, player management Paramount in the management of team-sport ath- letes is the understanding of competition demands and how players respond to and recover from these demands in preparation for the subsequent week’s training and competition. Indeed, the next competition for some team sports may be within 2 to 4 days, contributing to the overall demands and limiting the opportunity for optimal recovery and regeneration. Australian Football is an intense team sport compris- ing long periods of steady running combined with inter- mittent bouts of high-intensity running and impact trauma from opponents and ground contact. Game demands have been described 1 and reviewed 2 previously. These demands provide practitioners with the challenge of managing the physical and physiological outcomes players experience during a weekly competition cycle. The management of these demands over a 23-week season, plus 4 weeks of fnals if successful, is an additional challenge; therefore, the weekly management in Australian Football and simi- lar team sports revolves around maximizing recovery and minimizing excessive training stress when the competi- tion itself is a suffcient exercise stimulus. In team sport, one of the primary aims is to keep player availability high; this ensures healthy competition between players for selection and that the best players are available for the greatest chance of team success. The importance of this management was insightfully shown by Gabbett and Jenkins. 3 In rugby league, however, the outcomes showed that increases in training load can have detrimental effects on injury rates. In addition, Coutts and Reaburn 4 proposed that the 72-hour period after a rugby league game is critical for ensuring appropriate recovery for the next game, and small doses of additional training during this period can negatively infuence performance. MacLean et al 5 also showed that neuromuscular perfor- mance and perception of fatigue are reduced for at least 48 hours after competition but with appropriate training are recovered to baseline levels within 4 days. A recovery time between 2 football (soccer) matches of 72 to 96 hours appears suffcient to maintain the level of physi- cal performance in sport-specifc testing but is too short to maintain a low injury rate. 6 In Australian Football, countermovement-jump assessments of neuromuscular function were disrupted in the 72 hours after a game and compromised at 60% of weekly assessments over a competitive season. 7,8 A moderate increase (10%) in training load when assessed by the session-rating of perceived exertion (RPE) method was associated with 40% of injuries during 15 weeks of Australian Football preseason training. 9 Exercise-induced muscle damage is caused by activi- ties that induce eccentric actions of active musculature, causing a disruption to the sarcolemma. A consequence of