Sport participation characteristics were determined following the methodology presented by Foster. Total volume of sport
practice (exposure time) was expressed in minutes. To be able to apply the session RPE methodology previously presented8,9 to our data set, we attributed the following, corresponding values from the Borg CR-10 scale (arbitrary unit) to each smiley icon: light = 2, moderate = 4, intense = 7 and very intense = 9. The product of session intensity thus determined and session volume was defined as session load. The sessions of each day were added-up to provide daily training load and, similarly, the sessions of each week were summated to obtain weekly training load. Mean daily
load and the standard deviation (SD) were calculated for each week. The monotony of each week was computed by dividing the mean daily load by the standard deviation of the training load of that week. The weekly strain was determined as the product of weekly training load and monotony.