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Monitoring Heat Stress during Female Football Competition and Training in Hot Conditions [Received March 9, 2005 ; Accepted February 9, 2006] Since the football (soccer) season of the National Sports Festival in Japan changed from fall to summer in 2002, the competition, local elimination round and daily training were expected to be carried out in an extremely hot environment. We therefore applied a type of intervention strategy to cope with hot weather competition and training for the female prefectural football team. Environmental conditions and body weight of players before and after activities were monitored for 3 months. We have also done the guidance in appropriate water intake during exercise, management of the players' injuries and brief leg cooling for accelerating recovery from fatigue. The mean ambient temperature during the whole training period at evening was 32.0±3.0˚C, and mean wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) during the competition was 28.1±2.3˚C. The mean body weight loss during the whole training period and games was 0.57±0.2 kg, the percentage of dehydration was 1.15±0.3 %. These results suggest that, even when environmental condition is severe, the players keep a good condition for a long training period. Consequently the team won the local area elimination round and placed fifth in the 2002 National Sports Festival under the hot conditions. Keywords: hot environment, conditioning, body weight, cooling |