Effects of training load and physical stress on performance and biomarkers indicative of health, nutrition, recovery, and performance in collegiate male and female athletes

Athlete tracking and monitoring have made recent technological advancements to encompass internal physiological markers (heart rate, heart rate variability, biomarkers) and external workload markers (GPS, accelerometry). Heart rate monitoring is a commonly used technique to monitor on-field training load (TL) which represents internal "effort" to complete a physical task. This effort is quantified as TL via algorithms based on heart rate response specific to each athlete or as exercise energy expenditure (EEE). Unfortunately, many TL monitoring techniques (including heart rate monitoring) only account for what is happening on the field and are unable to capture off-field stressors. Implementation of additional monitoring tools, such as blood biomarkers, can give insight as to athlete's health, performance, and recovery status by encompassing both on and off the field stressors. Blood biomarkers can provide a comprehensive analysis of the physiological and biochemical response to TL that would otherwise be undetected through the more traditional monitoring techniques. Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation is to evaluate the cumulative effects of season long TL in male and female collegiate soccer players. Our primary hypothesis is the training load and blood biomarkers will change over the course of the season, the secondary hypothesis is there will be a difference in these parameters between males and females.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference