Naomi Myhill

I joined the Inform Performance Podcast to discuss the importance of starting with a performance problem in research, how this applies in club environments, and insights into the physical demands of women's football.

Check out the episode below! 🎧👇

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/i...

26.02.2025 17:55 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Thank you to all the WSL-A teams and practitioners involved in the project! 🤝 And to the support team

11/11

13.02.2025 22:57 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

3️⃣Inform manipulation of drill constraints to achieve desired intensity, to balance TEC-tac & physical development goals

⬇️🚨

🏆This study provides power-law relationship reference values to evaluate tactical-technical drill intensity in academy environments

10/11

13.02.2025 22:57 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

💡 How do you know if a drill is ‘high intensity’?

1️⃣Understand the peak match demands first. E.g. what is the greatest overall distance covered by a player in any minute period (m/min)?
2️⃣Compare duration matched drill intensity to peak match intensity

⬇️

9/11

13.02.2025 22:57 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

⚽️Practical Applications⚽️

📈Use variability values to identify meaningful changes in volume & intensity between matches ➡️ inform training programming

(cont. ⬇️)

8/11

13.02.2025 22:57 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

(Cont.)

academy practitioners can be confident using the peak reference values from this study to evaluate tactical-technical drill intensities

➡️Between-match variability greatest for Sprint Distance

7/11

13.02.2025 22:57 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

📣 Key findings 📣

➡️ Outfield players experience similar physical match demands in WSL Academy, regardless of their position

➡️ Little variability between teams for peak physical performance variables so (cont.) ⬇️

6/11

13.02.2025 22:57 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

The next step was understanding

2️⃣ What are the physical match characteristics?
*study on WSL A teams only

📈An important level to ensure players are exposed to appropriate running speeds to support preparing players to successfully progress to elite senior (WSL) football

5/11

13.02.2025 22:57 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

A multi-club analysis of the locomotor training characteristics of elite female soccer players Quantifying differences in locomotor characteristics of training between two competition levels and between training days within elite female soccer players.Foot-mounted inertial measurement unit (...

1️⃣ What are the current physical training characteristics in elite female football?

✅ Published in these studies:

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

4/11

13.02.2025 22:57 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

1️⃣How can we optimise physical preparation for match play?
2️⃣How can we optimise progression between competitive levels

The first steps to solving these problems was understanding: ⬇️

3/11

13.02.2025 22:57 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

To our knowledge this is the first study to report sources of variability in elite academy female football (multi-club).

As part of the FA Demands of the Game Project we identified 🔑 performance problems we needed to address:

2/11

13.02.2025 22:57 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

🚨 New Paper 🚨
✅ Open Access ✅

Pleased to get the 3rd study from my PhD published, investigating the match characteristics of elite female academy soccer ⚽️ 🏃‍♀️⬇️

🤝11 WSL-A teams 🏃‍♀️257 players ⚽️171 matches

Thread 🧵⬇️

journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

13.02.2025 22:57 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0