Should athletes have more days of rest between competition during the COVID-19 pandemic?
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COVID transmission outside of sports
Athletics in 2020 certainly has not been business as usual. While many game schedules have been condensed, in most cases the amount of time allotted between scheduled competitions has not been altered.
This begs those of us who care for athletes to ask the question, “Would more time off between meetings of teams allow for less virus transmission?” If one were to answer this question in the affirmative, you would have to assume the greatest risk of infection in a student athlete’s life occurs on the field of play. This would then project that by allowing 14 days off between meetings (the time that assures virus presentation), we would allow all teams to guarantee there was no virus passed during a game making it “safe” to play the next contest. Where this hypothesis derails is that the past 10 months have clearly shown us that the greatest risk of infection is not on the field but at the dorm party. Contact tracing student athletes since March 2020 has shown little to no virus transmission during sports participation, but rather during their free/social time. When we allow more days between games, we also allow more time that players may go unscheduled allowing “Idle hands to make devil’s work.” It has seemed the more rest time we give kids, especially college kids, they naturally fill it with social activities that are the epicenter of our viral clusters. Additionally, if schools are following the NCAA testing protocols for high-contact sports, we should and have, in many cases, picked up the asymptomatic or early positive cases, therefore limiting transmission between teams when they meet on the field of play. Since there are no guarantees in life or with COVID-19, I would suggest that time between scheduled events will not affect viral transmission rates as much as having consistent testing protocols and educating student athletes about their behavior between events.
Jeanne M. Doperak, DO, is an assistant professor of sports medicine and a team physician at the University of Pittsburgh and primary care sports medicine fellowship director at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pittsburgh.
Rest between games may allow for recovery
As we entered each respective professional sports season during these unprecedented times, I think most of us expected to see an increase in various injury rates due to the hastened preseason and alterations in the training, practice and competition schedules during the week due to various COVID-19 restrictions. Whether athletes should have more days of rest between competitions is debatable. In the NFL, the regular season has been able to maintain a somewhat standard, weekly cadence of the game schedule. This has allowed the medical staff, coaching staff and players to maintain some normalcy in their routines preparing for games in an otherwise abnormal year. Historically, we have seen a slight uptick in injury rates when there is an extended period between games, which may be related to players falling out of their game preparation habits if there is a bye week or an extended period of time between the games. This year, we saw an increase in certain injury rates over the first few weeks of the NFL season, and because we did not have a typical preseason schedule, I would theorize that over the first few weeks of the season an extended period between games played may have compensated for the missed preseason and allowed players to recover, train and prepare for the rigors of the season. However, as the season progressed and players were acclimated in their playing routines, maintaining the typical structure of an NFL weekly schedule is proven.
Kyle E. Hammond, MD, of the Emory University Sports Medicine Center in Brookhaven, Georgia, is the head team physician for the Atlanta Falcons, head orthopedist for the Atlanta Hawks and team orthopedist for the Atlanta Braves.
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