Study population
This study included 37 young Egyptian male athletes whose ages ranged
between 9 and 11 years. They played soccer in private sporting clubs in
Cairo. Their regular routine was 5 weekly practices each is two hours
long. The single practice was divided into three parts; warming up for
15 minutes which starts by stretching exercises and ends by running down
the soccer field outer track then another half an hour muscle
strengthening exercises followed by 30 minutes of soccer tactics and
lastly 45 minutes playing soccer in the field. The coach encouraged them
to stay active and engage in all sports during school day.
Unfortunately, schools were closed on the 25thFebruary 2020 and clubs followed in March 2020. The young athletes were
instructed to do daily home exercises in the form of attending three
weekly online training sessions 120 minutes long each. Nevertheless, 90
minutes daily attendance was considered sufficient since some athletes’
families didn’t have high speed unlimited internet subscriptions. The
young athletes were supposed to substitute the strengthening muscle
exercises for actual soccer playing as most of them had restrictions due
to lack of adequate spaces at home. According to their response to these
instructions the team was further divided into;
The intense exercise group which included those who did the whole 90- or
120-minutes online training daily and performed all the strengthening
and stretching exercises. Attending the daily mental speech session
which the coach started for psychological support was also required from
this group.
The medium exercise group and this comprised those who could achieve at
least 90 minutes 2-3 times per week online training, exercises and
psychological support sessions.
The mild exercise group who were only able to do at least once per week
the 90 minutes online training and couldn’t maintain all exercises or
psychological support sessions.
The no exercise group contained those who didn‘t do any neither daily
training nor exercises during the lockdown period. This group wasn’t
compliant to the psychological support session either.