The relative contribution of training intensity and duration to daily measures of training load in professional rugby league and union

ABSTRACT

This study examined the relative contribution of exercise duration and intensity to team-sport athlete’s training load. Male, professional rugby league (n = 10) and union (n = 22) players were monitored over 6- and 52-week training periods, respectively. Whole-session (load) and per-minute (intensity) metrics were monitored (league: session rating of perceived exertion training load [sRPE-TL], individualised training impulse, total distance, BodyLoad?; union: sRPE-TL, total distance, high-speed running distance, PlayerLoad?). Separate principal component analyses were conducted on the load and intensity measures to consolidate raw data into principal components (PC, k = 4). The first load PC captured 70% and 74% of the total variance in the rugby league and rugby union datasets, respectively. Multiple linear regression subsequently revealed that session duration explained 73% and 57% of the variance in first load PC, respectively, while the four intensity PCs explained an additional 24% and 34%, respectively. Across two professional rugby training programmes, the majority of the variability in training load measures was explained by session duration (~60–70%), while a smaller proportion was explained by session intensity (~30%). When modelling the training load, training intensity and duration should be disaggregated to better account for their between-session variability.     

New scalar politics: implications for education policy

This paper argues that globalisation has implications for research and theory in the social sciences, demanding that the social no longer be seen as homologous with nation, but also linked to postnational or global fields. This situation has theoretical and methodological implications for comparative education specifically focused on education policy, which traditionally has taken the nation-state as the unit of analysis, and also worked with ‘methodological nationalism’. The paper argues that globalisation has witnessed a rescaling of educational politics and policymaking and relocated some political authority to an emergent global education policy field, with implications for the functioning of national political authority and national education policy fields. This rescaling and this reworking of political authority are illustrated through two cases: the first is concerned with the impact of a globalised policy discourse of the ‘knowledge economy’ proselytised by the OECD and its impact in Australian policy developments; the second is concerned explicitly with the constitution of a global education policy field as a commensurate space of equivalence, as evidenced in the OECD’s PISA and educational indicators work and their increasing global coverage. The paper indicatively utilises Bourdieu’s ‘thinking tools’ to understand the emergent global education policy field and suggests these are very useful for doing comparative education policy analysis.     

Web-based PDA downloads for clinical practice guidelines and decision support tools

The extraordinary volume of health-related information made available on the Internet comes at a high cost for effectively storing and accessing clinical information resources. Additionally, the ability to use critical patient care information is limited to the availability of computer access. Physicians and other health care professionals have readily adopted personal digital assistants (PDAs), also known as handheld computers, because the devices provide succinct critical patient care information at the point of need. Clinical practice guidelines available through the Internet for use with PDAs present health professionals, who have little time, with powerful information already formatted for point-of-care devices. This paper will review several strategies for finding and accessing point-of-care clinical information.     

Interview and Concours: teacher appointment procedures in England and Wales and France,and what they mean

The paper compares and contrasts two methods or styles of selecting and appointing teachers. In England and Wales, teachers are invariably appointed by interview to particular posts in particular schools; in France, teachers are appointed to life‐long Civil Service positions as a result of a competitive examination or concours. Each of these procedures reflects different assumptions about the education system in general and about the work of teachers in particular. These differences flow from the very different histories of the nation‐states concerned. Recent changes, especially in the French system, are described and discussed. The author points to the tension between pressure from the European Union to integrate and harmonise national qualifications, and the deeply rooted character of distinct national cultures of schooling, teaching and learning and assessment.     

High-Tech Classrooms Need Highly Competent Instructors

The 21 st century classroom requires instructors with more advanced skills and competencies to deliver materials in a way that engages students both traditional and non-traditional. Traditional students have come to expect the incorporation of technology into their classrooms because they have grown up with it and can see its usefulness, while non-traditional students may need additional resources online in order to reinforce new concepts. By employing Web 2.0 technologies, like online video and discussion boards, into both the online and traditional on-campus classrooms, instructors can address both isolation and different learning styles, as well as address issues relating to problems with understanding concepts being taught and respond positively to feedback provided by both the students and administrators. In addition, utilizing Web 2.0 technology in the online classroom can reduce the isolation that many students feel in these classrooms by ensuring students can communicate with other students as well as the instructor.     

Learning from the experts: gaining insights into best practice during the acquisition of three novel motor skills

The amount and quality of practice predicts expertise, yet optimal conditions of practice have primarily been explored with novice learners. Ten expert musicians and ten novices practiced disc-throwing skills under self-regulated conditions. A third novice group practiced with the same schedule as the music experts (yoked). The groups did not differ in terms of the amount of contextual interference, only in terms of when in-practice interference was introduced. The music experts progressed from a more blocked to random schedule which was opposite to the novices. This resulted in more accurate performance in retention for the experts in comparison to both novice groups (self-scheduled and yoked). The music expert and yoked groups showed higher form scores than the novice self-scheduled group, which might be related to the greater frequency of augmented information for these groups. There was no evidence that non-task-domain experts choose a more random practice schedule than novices, but in accord with good practice principles, they gradually introduced high amounts of interference into their practice. This strategy was associated with less error in retention for the experts. Because the yoked group showed more error than the music experts, the advantage of this schedule was also performance dependent.