Players' opinions about the importance of a range of training components for improving football performance or for preventing lower-limb injuries.
| (Training component) would improve football performance?* | (Training component) would prevent lower-limb injuries?* | Wilcoxon signed rank test | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Training component | SA/A | U | SD/D | SA/A | U | SD/D | |D|† | p Value |
| Ball-handling skills | 97.0 | 2.2 | 0.8 | 35.4 | 32.7 | 31.9 | 332 | <0.001 |
| Drills and set-plays | 95.3 | 3.9 | 0.8 | 46.5 | 34.3 | 19.1 | 238 | <0.001 |
| Kicking skills | 98.9 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 60.4 | 23.4 | 16.2 | 192 | <0.001 |
| Sprint sessions | 87.7 | 7.9 | 4.4 | 66.9 | 17.9 | 15.2 | 117 | <0.001 |
| Endurance/fatigue training | 94.0 | 4.9 | 1.1 | 73.4 | 17.7 | 8.9 | 105 | <0.001 |
| Wearing protective equipment | 40.4 | 30.6 | 29.0 | 55.9 | 25.9 | 18.2 | 95 | <0.001 |
| Balance training | 55.3 | 32.0 | 12.7 | 69.2 | 23.9 | 6.9 | 69 | <0.001 |
| Weights/resistance training | 85.5 | 9.6 | 4.9 | 74.6 | 15.2 | 10.2 | 60 | <0.001 |
| Cool-downs | 81.5 | 12.0 | 6.5 | 91.5 | 5.2 | 3.3 | 47 | <0.001 |
| Cutting/stepping training | 80.2 | 14.4 | 5.4 | 72.8 | 17.0 | 10.2 | 43 | 0.001 |
| Warm-up run | 88.0 | 6.5 | 5.4 | 91.5 | 4.9 | 3.6 | 18 | 0.08 |
| Jumping and landing training | 66.2 | 25.6 | 8.2 | 71.3 | 19.1 | 9.6 | 11 | 0.52 |
| Warm-up stretches | 88.8 | 5.4 | 5.7 | 90.4 | 4.4 | 5.2 | 6 | 0.55 |
↵* Percentage of those with valid (non-missing) responses to the question.
↵† Absolute value of the sum of differences between football performance and lower-limb injury prevention scores. The greater the value of |D|, the greater the differences between the two.
SA/A, strongly agree/agree; SD/D, strongly disagree/disagree; U, uncertain.