Abstract

Over recent years, integrated training in football has taken a leading role in relation to other more conventional tasks due to its high degree of specificity. For this reason, the purpose of this study is to analyze the physiological burden of 3 vs. 3 games with special rules in three different spaces (15 x 15, 20 x 20 and 30 x 30 metres) through heart rate, perceived exertion and the degree of recovery from exertion. The research was carried out with C. D. Universidad de León players in the 1st Provincial Division for amateurs who train three times a week. The results of the analysis of the games in the reduced size spaces show that if we take heart rate as an indicator of physiological burden, the 30 x 30 metre area gives the highest workload (86.42 ± 2.79%, 86.75 ± 3.55% and 93.15 ± 3.91% of the anaerobic threshold in the 15 x 15, 20 x 20 and 30 x 30 metre spaces respectively). However, on the Borg Scale the area with the highest workload is 20 x 20 metres, with a mean value of 17.83 ± 0.75 versus 16.83 ± 0.75 and 17.17 ± 0.75 for the other two areas (15 x 15 and 30 x 30 metres respectively). Our data show that in small area games, heart rate as an indicator of physiological burden suggests it is significantly higher in a 30 x 30 space than in smaller spaces (15 x 15 or 20 x 20). Moreover, the findings indicate that perceived exertion is not related to heart rate in the tasks we studied.