Acute fatigue in indoor court-based team sports : A systematic review

Journal article

Clark, Anthony, Heyward, Omar, Paul, Lara, Jones, Ben and Whitehead, Sarah. (2025). Acute fatigue in indoor court-based team sports : A systematic review. PLoS ONE. 20(2), p. Article e0316831. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0316831
AuthorsClark, Anthony, Heyward, Omar, Paul, Lara, Jones, Ben and Whitehead, Sarah
Abstract

Fatigue in team sports has been widely researched, with a number of systematic reviews summarising the acute (i.e., within 48-hours) response in outdoor sports. However, the fatigue response to indoor court-based sports is likely to differ to outdoor sports due to smaller playing fields, harder surfaces, and greater match frequencies, thus should be considered separately to outdoor sports. Therefore, this study aimed to conduct a systematic review on acute fatigue in indoor court-based team-sport, identify methods and markers used to measure acute fatigue, and describe acute fatigue responses. A systematic search of the electronic databases (PubMed, SPORTDiscus, MEDLINE and CINHAL) was conducted from earliest record to June 2023. Included studies investigated either a physical, technical, perceptual, or physiological response taken before and after training, match, or tournament play. One-hundred and eight studies were included, measuring 142 markers of fatigue. Large variability in methods, fatigue markers and timeline of measurements were present. Cortisol (n =  43), creatine kinase (n =  28), countermovement jump (n =  26) and testosterone (n =  23) were the most frequently examined fatigue markers. Creatine kinase displayed the most consistent trend, increasing 10–204% at 24-hours across sports. There is large variability across studies in the methods and markers used to determine acute fatigue responses in indoor court-based team sports. Future researchers should focus on markers that display high reliability and transfer to practice. The robustness of studies may be increased by ensuring appropriate methods and timescale of fatigue marker measurement are used. Further research is required to determine which combination of markers best describes a fatigue response.

Keywordssports; fatigue; material fatigue; cortisol; testosterone; endocrine physiology; database searching; time measurement
Year2025
JournalPLoS ONE
Journal citation20 (2), p. Article e0316831
PublisherPublic Library of Science
ISSN1932-6203
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0316831
PubMed ID39951418
Scopus EID2-s2.0-85218077688
PubMed Central IDPMC11828399
Open accessPublished as ‘gold’ (paid) open access
Page range1-28
Publisher's version
License
File Access Level
Open
Output statusPublished
Publication dates
Online14 Feb 2025
Publication process dates
Accepted17 Dec 2024
Deposited04 Apr 2025
Additional information

© 2025 Clark et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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