The purpose of the current investigation was to describe the activity within English FA Premier League match play. There were 20 players included in the study; 4 centre backs, 4 wide backs, 4 central midfielders, 4 wide midfielders and 4 forwards. The entire on-field activity of the players was verbally coded and recorded for later entry into a computerised time-motion analysis system. The players spent 9.5±2.5% of the first half performing high intensity activity compared to 7.8±2.4% of the second half (p < 0.001). Positional role had a significant influence on the percentage of match time spent performing high intensity activity (p = 0.006) with the 13.1+1.5% for wide backs being significantly greater than the 8.1±1.6% for centre backs (p = .011) and the 8.0±2.0% performed by forwards (p = .009). The high intensity activity performed by the players was intermittent with 58.0% of all bursts of high intensity activity being less than 3s. However, there was no relationship between the duration of high intensity burst and the recovery period that followed it (p = .737). Therefore, coaches and players should be aware that players may be required to take short recoveries after bursts of any duration.
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