Intermittent Fitness Test 30–15 (30–15IFT)

The 30–15_IFT was used to calculate the VO_2max of the players. The test started at an average speed of 8 km⋅h^–1 between a 40 m shuttle. Players started running 30 s after hearing the first beep (from line A to B and from B to C and then back). Each stage consisted of running for 30 s and then resting for 15 s. Thereafter, every stage had a 0.5 km⋅h^–1 increment until volitional exhaustion (Buchheit et al., 2010). Each person’s score was the last stage of speed that he could not continue, or three times not making it to the 2 m lines. At this time, the final velocity of the IFT (VIFT) was recorded. All these steps were performed after a standardized warm-up of 10 min. The following equation was used to determine the VO_2max (mL⋅kg^–1⋅min^–1) of each player (Buchheit et al., 2010) = 28.3 −(2.15 × 1) −(0.741 × age) −(0.0357 × mass) + (0.0586 × age × VIFT) + (1.03 × VIFT). The test–retest reliability was calculated, using intraclass coefficient (ICC), to be 0.86.