Abstract

The aim of this study was to establish objective benchmarks for countermovement jump (CMJ), countermovement rebound jump (CMRJ), and isometric mid-thigh pull (IMTP) metrics in male professional and youth soccer players. Professional (N = 139; age: 24 ± 5 years; height: 184 ± 7 cm; mass: 81 ± 9 kg) and youth (N = 137; age: 17 ± 1 years; height: 178 ± 17 cm; mass: 72 ± 8 kg) soccer players were recruited from 7 separate clubs. Many CMJ (25/32), CMRJ (24/30), and (2/2) IMTP metrics discriminated between age groups. Significant (p < 0.05) differences were identified in CMJ outcome (4/4), propulsive kinetic (6/6), and relative propulsive kinetic (4/4) metrics, but trivial non-significant (p > 0.05) differences were identified in strategy (4/4) metrics. Rebound jump portion propulsive kinetic (4/4) metrics and braking depth demonstrated moderate to large differences between groups, but only one relative propulsive kinetic (1/4) metric demonstrated significant (p < 0.01) differences. Professional soccer players also demonstrated significantly (p < 0.001) greater IMTP peak force (3031 ± 549 N vs 2441 ± 452 N; g = 0.788) and relative peak force (37.39 ± 5.35 N/kg vs 34.01 ± 4.74 N/kg; g = 0.446) than youth soccer players.

RAS ID

83417

Document Type

Journal Article

Date of Publication

1-1-2025

Funding Information

University of Salford / Hawkin Dynamics Inc.

School

School of Medical and Health Sciences

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Identifier

Paul Comfort: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1131-8626

Comments

Badby, A. J., Comfort, P., Ripley, N. J., Mundy, P. D., Soriano, M. A., Robles-Palazón, F. J., Fahey, J., Sindall, P., Bramah, C., & McMahon, J. J. (2025). Normative data and objective benchmarks for selected force plate tests for professional and youth soccer players in the English Football League. Journal of Sports Sciences. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2025.2523671

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