Table 1. Average weekly load in practices and matches

The subjects included in this study were 18 male soccer players (mean age: 19.84±1.04 years, mean height: 176.41±7.25 cm, mean weight: 72.05±6.40 kg) affiliated with a university club. The top nine [A1] players who accumulated 50% or more of the total playing time in 11 official matches between May and July 2022 were classified into the R group.[A2] The bottom nine players who accumulated less than 50% of the total playing time in 11 official matches were classified into the NR group. Table 1 illustrates the practice and game time for each group. With the official and practice matches combined, the NR group played for approximately 62.9% of the time as compared with the R group. There were no differences in terms of training time between the R and NR groups. This study was conducted in accordance with the principles embodied in the Declaration of Helsinki [A3] and was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Fukuoka University (approval no.: 22-01-03)[A4] . Additionally, informed consent was obtained from all participants. [A1]Numbers less than 10 are written out unless they are accompanied with a unit [A2]These abbreviations were already defined [A3]I have inserted this statement regarding compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki here in order to better reflect your study’s adherence to <em>Science and Medicine in Football</em>’s policies on research ethics, as expressed in the following underlined instructions from the formatting guidelines of your target journal. Please verify that my insertions here are acceptable for you. "<strong>Complying with Ethics of Experimentation</strong> Please ensure that all research reported in submitted papers has been conducted in an ethical and responsible manner, and is in full compliance with all relevant codes of experimentation and legislation. All original research papers involving humans, animals, plants, biological material, protected or non-public datasets, collections or sites, must include a written statement in the Methods section, confirming ethical approval has been obtained from the appropriate local ethics committee or Institutional Review Board and that where relevant, informed consent has been obtained. For animal studies, approval must have been obtained from the local or institutional animal use and care committee. All research studies on humans (individuals, samples, or data) must have been performed in accordance with the principles stated in the Declaration of Helsinki. In settings where ethics approval for non-interventional studies (e.g. surveys) is not required, authors must include a statement to explain this." [A4]For transparency, please also indicate the ethics approval number here.