Trial reportJournal of sports science & medicine2026
Determinants of Cardiovascular Load Variability During Small-Sided Games: Influence of Game Format, Bout Intensity, and Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery Performance.
Trial report in Journal of sports science & medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The impact of small-sided games on the athletic performance of basketball players: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Pooled it
- Flexible Coding of Morpheme Position Information in Tibetan Reading: Evidence from Eye Movements.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Using a randomized, counter-balanced cross-over design in under-19 male soccer players, this study examined whether within-player cardiovascular load variability during small-sided games (SSGs) is more strongly associated with game format (3v3 vs 5v5), intermittent aerobic capacity, or the mean heart-rate intensity achieved across bouts. Sixty players (17-19 years) completed two weeks of SSGs, performing four 3-min bouts per format with 2-min recovery. Heart rate (HR) was recorded continuously. Cardiovascular variability for each format was quantified for each player as the coefficient of variation of bout-level HRmean across the four 3-min bouts (CV% = SD/mean × 100). Intermittent aerobic capacity was assessed using the Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery Test Level 1 (Yo-Yo IR1). Linear mixed-effects modelling examined the independent associations between format, Yo-Yo IR1 performance, mean HR intensity, and CV% was log-transformed to address skewness and improve model residuals. Paired comparisons showed that HRmean was higher in 3v3 than in 5v5 (p < 0.001), whereas between-player variability (CV%) was higher in 5v5 than in 3v3. Specifically, CV% was 1.97 ± 0.81% in 3v3 versus 2.61 ± 1.21% in 5v5, while mean HR intensity was 180.9 ± 2.8 bpm in 3v3 compared with 173.6 ± 3.6 bpm in 5v5. The mixed model indicated that mean HR intensity was the only significant predictor of cardiovascular variability (β = -0.027, 95% CI = -0.050 to -0.005, p = 0.019). Neither SSG format (β = 0.056, p = 0.618) nor Yo-Yo IR1 performance (β = -0.00008, p = 0.385) were significant predictors. The fixed-effects structure explained 13.6% of the variance (marginal R
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