CUIDAR's scientific coordinator has an article published in the International Journal of Sports Physiology
Carolina Wilke, among other functions, is responsible for controlling the athletes' training load, aiming for high sports performance.
By Romulo Paranhos - in
Carolina Wilke, CUIDAR's Scientific Coordinator, recently had an article published in the International Journal of Sports Physiology, a prestigious North American journal that compiles the world's most important scientific articles related to sports. Wilke, in addition to her other responsibilities within the club's department, is responsible for managing the training load of the Mais Querido athletes, always aiming for high athletic performance. Izabel Miranda, Manager of CUIDAR, highlighted the importance of having an article published in a journal with a high international impact.
"When we brought CUIDAR to Flamengo, the main objective was to use it as a tool for monitoring training load and also to control the impact of excessive workload on athletes. So it was very important to have Carolina's article published in such an internationally relevant journal," said Izabel.
Carolina Wilke answered some questions on the Official Website about her scientific article published in the North American journal. Read below:
- How important is the publication of this article for your career?
This was the third and final article of my doctoral program, which I completed in 2019. It symbolizes the end of a period of many opportunities, challenges, and, above all, learning. With it, I had the opportunity to bring science to the courtside and learn how to make adaptations while maintaining quality. I also conducted extensive benchmarking in Australia, a country with a significant impact on our field. I also helped disseminate the quality of Brazilian sports science to other countries through published articles.
Can you explain a little about how this training load monitoring and the impacts of excess load on the athlete works? What is the importance of this study in the preseason?
In short, what we showed in this study was that training with appropriate loads can not only improve athletes' performance but also help them recover faster for subsequent training sessions and matches on subsequent days. Quantifying what athletes accomplish in training, how their bodies react, and their sleep and eating routines—which we call monitoring—helps the coaching staff plan this training load so that it's not so high that it causes excessive fatigue, for example, or so low that it doesn't result in adaptations that improve performance. This balance in training load is especially important in the preseason of team sports, when teams prepare for championships. For these teams, it's often the most favorable period to train more times a week and develop their physical capabilities, and now we have evidence that it can also improve their recovery for the next challenge.
- Why was futsal the modality studied?
Before joining Flamengo, I worked as a scientific consultant for a futsal team for five years, where we implemented a training monitoring program. When I started, there were still few studies on the sport, so we couldn't find answers to common questions about planning athletes' training and recovery loads. So we began seeking answers within our own teams, developing scientifically rigorous studies with the ultimate goal of practical application.