The recent study by Asimakidis et al1 assessed the reliability and seasonal sensitivity of proxy measures of lower-limb explosive strength, sprinting, change of direction, and endurance in 24 youth soccer players. Given the importance of knowing the amount of measurement error to inform practical judgments,2 small-scale reliability studies can be prone to a degree of uncertainty, preventing the understanding of whether any change in an applied observation can represent a real change in an athlete`s performance.2 Fundamentally, reliability studies are conducted to determine whether any change in a performance outcome may be distinguishable from measurement error by deriving, for example, a minimal detectable change of the scale typically calculated as: 1.96 × v2 × standard error of the measurement.3 This notion differs from the definition of a minimal important change, which indicates the smallest change in a score domain of interest that athletes and coaches may perceive as meaningful.3 Asimakidis et al1 may have fallen foul of historical misinterpretations of statistical significance as practical relevance,4 as it remains unclear why standardized effect sizes or signal-to-noise ratio statistics informed interpretations of changes in performance outcomes that contradicted the between-day reliability results.1
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