# High-Speed Running and Sprinting Thresholds in Elite Female Team Sports: A Systematic Review
## 2 Materials and Methods
### Search Strategy and Systematic Review Protocol  
The search process for published scientific studies was carried out through four electronic databases (PubMed, Scopus, Sport Discus, and the Web of Science) and by reviewing email alerts from research databases and the bibliographies of other systematic reviews. The keywords that formed the four search strings were as follows: (1) \"women\" OR \"woman\" OR \"girl\" OR \"female\"; (2) \"team sport\" OR \"team-sport\" OR \"intermittent sport\" OR \"professional team sport\" OR \"elite sport\" OR \"elite team sport\" OR \"associative sport\" OR \"collaborative sport\" OR \"Australian football\" OR \"soccer\" OR \"football\" OR \"hockey\" OR \"field hockey\" OR \"rugby\" OR \"rugby sevens\" OR \"lacrosse\" OR \"American football\" OR \"National Collegiate Athletic Association\" OR \"NCAA\" OR \"basketball\" OR \"handball\" OR \"futsal\" OR \"netball\"; (3) \"standing still\" OR \"walking\" OR \"jogging\" OR \"slow running\" OR \"moderate-speed running\" OR \"high-speed running/min\" OR \"HSR\" OR \"HSR/min\" OR \"running\" OR \"high-intensity running\" OR \"sprint\" AND ALL (\"speed\" OR \"velocity\" OR \"quickness\" OR \"intensity\" OR \"running\" OR \"sprint\") AND ALL (\"threshold\" OR \"zone\"); (4) \"match demands\" OR \"competitive demands\" OR \"physical demands\" OR \"movement demands\" OR \"movement pattern\" OR \"external load\" OR \"external demands\" OR \"physical workload\" OR \"activity demand\" OR \"activity profile\" OR \"match profile\" OR \"match play\" OR \"match play\" OR \"match intensity\" OR \"game load\" OR \"game intensity\"; and (5) \"global positioning system\" OR \"GPS\" OR \"global navigation satellite system\" OR \"GNSS\" OR \"local positioning system\" OR \"LPS\" OR \"microtechnology\" OR \"microsensor\" OR \"tracking system\" OR \"athlete tracking system\" OR \"optical tracking system\" OR \"ultra-wide band\". According to the criteria for preparing systematic reviews, PRISMA, the Cochrane Consumers and Communication Review Group's data extraction protocol [16] was carried out in the months of August and September 2024, being composed of four stages (Figure 1): (1) identification: the second author (A.d.l.R.) found a total of 705 studies in the four databases consulted (PubMed, \(n=107\); Scopus, \(n=204\); Sport Discus, \(n=97\); and the Web of Science, \(n=296\)), plus 2 from other sources; (2) screening: after the elimination of duplicate records (\(n=204\)) by the second author ([PERSON]), 501 articles were considered for further analysis; (3) eligibility: after reading the title, abstract, and/or keywords, the second author ([PERSON]) ruled out 76 articles, leaving 425 records at the end of this phase; and (4) inclusion: after complete reading, 307 articles were excluded by the first (R.N.A. ), second ([PERSON]), third (E.A.P.C. ), and fourth (C.G.S.) authors for the following reasons: R1: referees and/or only men (\(n=56\)); R2: tiers 0 and 1 (\(n=23\)); R3: other team sports/individual sports (\(n=40\)); R4: experimental setting (\(n=84\)); R5: partial data presentation (\(n=4\)); R6: tracking technology (\(n=16\)); R7: individualized thresholds (\(n=34\)); R8: prospective models of speed thresholds (\(n=4\)); R9: validation of accelerometers (\(n=13\)); and R10: other external load variables (\(n=33\)). Moreover, of the full-text articles assessed for eligibility (\(n=118\)), systematic reviews (\(n=18\)), documents with a different format (i.e., theses or proceedings) (\(n=16\)), or those non-published in JCR or SJR (\(n=2\)) were eliminated. Finally, the total number of studies included in the systematic review was 82. The authors worked separately and independently to ensure the reliability of the process and the eligibility of the studies. Nevertheless, any discrepancies (n = 5) in the final inclusion-exclusion criteria were resolved by consensus discussion. Once the included  
Figure 1: PRISMA flow diagram of the search and selection process.