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.