Half-Time Strategies to Enhance Second-Half Performance in Team-Sports Players: A Review and Recomme

KEY POINTS:

- Passive half-time practices impair performance in the initial stages of the second half of team-sports competition.

- The efficacy of heat maintenance strategies, post-activation potentiation, hormonal priming, and modified hydro-nutritional practices have been shown in isolated studies.

- Passive heat maintenance strategies: heated clothing, outdoor survival jackets and heating pads.

- Viewing individual video footage (with associated feedback): individualised footage of successful player skill executions supported by affirmative positive cues from a coach may also benefit a player's subsequent performance.

- Rewarm-up incorporating high-intensity exercise and/or post-activation potentiation (PAP): acute bouts of high-intensity exercise may prove beneficial in terms of priming the systemic hormonal environment for subsequent exercise.

High-intensity exercise - Lower-body cycle sprint on a standard cycle, set on the manual mode at the highest resistance (level 20. Upper-body cycle sprint was performed on a standard grinder. Both exercises were performed at maximal intensity for 40 seconds with strong encouragement given.

Post-activation potentiation (PAP) - as PAP has been observed following short-duration plyometric activities, such exercises, when used as part of a re-warm-up strategy, may serve as a time-efficient method of improving subsequent performance. 3 sets of 10 alternate-leg bounds (5 contacts per leg per set). Following a 3 step run-up, players were instructed to push off with the left foot, and then through flexion at the hip bring the right leg forwards, so that the tight was approximately parallel to the ground with the knee flexed at ~90º before subsequent extension. Upon landing on the right foot, players were required to immediately repeat this sequence with the alternate foot until 5 contacts were completed on each leg. After a short period of active recovery, whereby players walked back to the starting position, 2 further sets were completed (each set of 10 bounds plus recovery lasted ~25 seconds).

- Caffeine chewing gum & Carbohydrate mouth swilling: within the final stages preceding the restart of competition, the provision of caffeinated gum (with subsequent expectoration before competition recommences) and carbohydrate solutions (for the purposes of mouth swilling) should be considered. Mouth-rinsing carbohydrate solutions can positively influence the perception of effort during subsequent exercise and facilitate peak power output during the initial stages of repeated sprint tests.

- Optimized hydro-nutritional practices: half-time strategies relating to the consumption of exogenous energy (i.e. carbohydrates) could be optimized by modifying the glycemic index of the beverage consumed, the timing of ingestion, the amount of carbohydrate consumed and/or by combining ingestion with a half-time re-warm-up.

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