Öz
Aim: In handball, which demands short-term high-intensity activities, gender differences have been clearly shown in physical and physiological characteristics and throwing velocity parameters. There are limitations in gathering real-time handball specific match data except for these types of performance parameters. However, recently, a more detailed examination of the player load in indoor team sports is possible with wearable technologies. This study aims to compare the position-specific player loads of male and female players during the handball match.
Method: The forty-two field players (20 female and 22 male) from four different Turkish Handball Super League teams (2 male's and 2 female's teams) that played in a friendly tournament voluntarily participated in this study. Goalkeepers and field players whose total playing time is less than 10 minutes were not included in the analysis. Before the games, all players suited up a manufacturer-made vest that included Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensors (OptimEye S5, Catapult Sports, Australia) at the posterior side of the upper trunk and also wore a compatible chest band (Polar T31 Coded, Finland) for the monitoring heart rate. In the gathered data, player substitutions (time spent on the bench) and game pauses (active playing time) were filtered by marking with the manufacturer's software (OpenField, Catapult Sports, Australia).
Results: Although active playtimes were found to be similar for both genders, there was a significant difference between player load and heart rate responses. Total player load and average player load were higher in female handball players, while peak player load was statistically higher in male handball players (265.50±93.06 PLtotal, 255.80±81.59 PLtotal; 8.30±1.27 PL/min, 8.07±1.64 PL/min, respectively). Similarly, in player load density zones, male players showed less player load effort in low-level zones and more player load effort in high-level zones than females. Internal load responses were found to be significantly higher in the heart rate exhaustion parameter of female handball players in comparison to men.
Conclusion: In line with the literature, these research findings showed that the gender difference in most of the key performance indicators in handball showed significant differences in player load during the match. However, further studies are required to gather data from more competitive league-level matches where a higher number of matches are included.