Should your athletes train on, or use artificial surfaces?
Artificial surfaces have become the new big interest within sports. Many rugby clubs up and down the country are laying new 4G pitches, or having rubber crumb tracks installed, or athletic style tracks, as well as indoor astro turf for their players to use. Whilst it looks good, and feels great to run on, plus the enhancement in the amount of training and playing time can be increased because the weather plays no effect on the amount you can use it, does it benefit our athletes?
The first question is – by training on it, do our athletes improve? The reason I ask this is because running on a track, treadmill, artificial surface and grass change our biomechanics. The stiffness of the track and artificial surface allow for our bodies to generate more force, therefore quicker contact times and generally more speed (Kerdok, Biewener, McMahon, Weyand, & Herr, 2002; Di Rocco, Di Renzo, Ammazzalorso, & Merni, 2009). Treadmills allow for our bodies to take on a different biomechanical advantage because it is moving, therefore hamstring activation is decreased and to an extent our athletes can have longer contact times and let the treadmill do some of the work. Then there’s the usual surface that most outdoor team sports play on, grass. This surface depends much on the season as it will have different effects, from the hard summer months, to the wet and miserable winter days, our athletes have to adapt to this. For the majority of team sport players, this is what they have to get used to week in week out.
By training on these synthetic surfaces there might be a case for false hope. Training on a perfectly laid track or astro allows for far better movement mechanics so sprint times will be faster, cutting can be easier, footwear is often more lightweight and pliable. If our athletes are constantly training in these conditions in order to improve speed, cutting, movement, then they will have a shock once they move onto grass where its not completely flat, mud can limit your quick movements and therefore not allow you to perform as well as you feel you can, ground contact time and forward lean must be enhanced in order to build up any kind of speed (Kerdok et al., 2002).
What about injury rates? There has been a lot of noise around the fact that because these new surfaces are rubber crumb, the crumbs move, therefore making the surface you play or train on, potentially unstable. There’s talk of it possibly increasing ACL injury risk (Williams, Trewartha, Kemp, Michell, & Stokes, 2016). Also, training on surfaces in which your athletes could run faster may well lead them to over train. If your athletes aren’t strong enough to be running at the speeds in which you want them to, this could result in injury.
Lastly, it is a disadvantage to visiting teams for those who do have the facilities to play on artificial surfaces week in, week out (Wilson & Kerr, 1999). The total perceived effort of running on artificial surfaces has been shown to be higher then on normal grass (Andersson, Ekbolm, & Grustrup, 2008). Average running speeds are higher; ball in play (no matter what sport) is longer (Di Rocco et al., 2009; Norton, Schwerdt, & Lange, 2001). Muscle soreness post game, for up to 4 days has shown to be increased (Williams et al., 2016). Therefore training loads in the week post game on artificial surfaces may need to be reduced because of soreness, or risk injury. Those who aren’t used to playing on this type of surface, will then need to adapt quickly pre and post game in order for their athletes to firstly prepare for that game, and then recover in time for next weeks. Teams who use artificial surfaces regularly for training or playing may recover quicker due to the repeated bout effect (McHugh, Connolly, Eston, & Gleim, 1999)
All that said, what do I think? I really like them. I like the way that for training you can develop a perfect model. You can work hard to develop your running style to its more efficient, running based injuries are lower, you can develop your cutting style to be quicker with better force production and potentially lower centre of mass whilst doing it. I like the idea that you are able to work harder, run faster than average on artificial surfaces – therefore ‘away’ games for you, may even seem easier as you’re used to a more open, fast game. The uber competitive side of me also enjoys the fact that travelling teams are at a slight disadvantage when playing against you.
Injuries wise there doesn’t seem to be cause for the concern that is around. Williams et al., found that when comparing one premiership team who uses the artificial surface, with another who doesn’t that the difference between injury rates was trivial – injury incidence on artificial surface came out at 66 per 1000 playing hours, compared to 73 per 1000 playing hours. The only large questions marks for me was the fact that the 2 largest injuries that lasted over 120 days each, were both on artificial surfaces.
There is room within sport for artificial training surfaces. As a strength and conditioning coach my job is to get the players I work with to move efficiently and with good technique. I can do this with a surface that is constant. I know that there needs to be a balance. Training on grass will reduce muscular soreness post training because there is more cushioning, and not all the players will recover well from constantly training on a potentially unforgiving surface. Using 4G, Astro or Rubber crumb allows for training to constantly go ahead no matter the weather. It allows for physiological improvements, as players need to get used to average speeds increasing. It has it’s limitations with potential for reduced training load for players up to 4 days post game, maybe a small increase in the likelihood of an ACL injury, but that is not a significant finding (Fuller, Clarke, & Molloy, 2010) as well as definite increased abrasion injuries (Williams at al., 2016), but it’s making the sports world more exciting, and potentially our athletes will improve because of this.
Reference List
Andersson, H., Ekbolm, B., & Grustrup, P. (2008). Elite football on atrificial turf versus natural grass: movement patterns, technical standards, and player impressions. Journal of Sports Sciences , 26 (2), 113-122.
Di Rocco, M., Di Renzo, A., Ammazzalorso, S., & Merni, F. (2009). Comparison of physiological responses to an incremental running test on treadmill, natural grass and synthetic turf in young soccer players. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research , 23 (3), 939-945.
Fuller, C. W., Clarke, L., & Molloy, M. G. (2010). Risk of injury associated with rugby union played on artifical turf. Journal of Sports Science , 28, 563-570.
Kerdok, A. E., Biewener, A. A., McMahon, T. A., Weyand, P. G., & Herr, H. M. (2002). Energetics and mechanics of human running on surfaces of different stifnesses. Journal of Applied Physiology , 47, 775-781.
McHugh, M., Connolly, D. J., Eston, R., & Gleim, G. (1999). Exercise-induced muscle damage and potential mechanisms for the repeated bout effect. Journal of Sports Medicine , 27, 157-170.
Norton, K., Schwerdt, S., & Lange, K. (2001). Evidence for the aetiology of injuries in australian football. British Journal of Sports Medicine , 35, 418-423.
Williams, S., Trewartha, G., Kemp, S. P., Michell, R., & Stokes, K. A. (2016). The influence of an artificial playing surface on injury risk and perceptions of muscle soreness in elite rugby union. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports , 26, 101-108.
Wilson, G. V., & Kerr, J. H. (1999). Affective response to success and failure: a study of winning and losing in competitive rugby. Personality and Individual Differences Journal , 27, 85-99.
