This topic has become very popular recently and has been the subject of a great many book chapters, blog posts and podcast episodes. All of which I have found interesting and inspiring leaving me wanting to go off and start monitoring my athletes.
I have done this in the past with some success, but never really seemed to master it, always looking enviously at those at the top end of the spectrum who can track GPS and HRV for all their athletes with tremendous precision every day.
In fact the Itunes lecture series from Bond University Australia, Chris McClellan from the Gold Cost Titans collected a terabyte of data in a single season. At first i thought this was incredible, but know think about the time and effort it would take to analyse that and the impact i could have on the athletes afterwards. Is my time best spent analysing data to come up with a precise training plan per workout per person, or is better spent looking at what they look like on the day and reacting to that?
This i think is the crux of where we are now. Yes there are lots of ways you can monitor, from data heavy technology to pen and paper. However, what is the best way to get to the best result?
What I am looking at personally, is the issues that face my athletes specifically and how to monitor those isses, rather than looking at what i could monitor with tech or apps or what is in vogue. Predomominantly, the people I work with are 16-19 full time students, with little or no athletic experience, but highly likely to over play and under train. We do have a quite a lot of access to the players but little time to process data. They are not contracted to a club and athletics is side issue to their academics. Therefore compliance is also an issue, both with data collection and following the interventions it creates.
So what are the big challenges around these athlete? So far these are the issues I have identified as key
- Poor Sleep – Late nights and over stimuation before sleep, through a whole range of social issues, inc video gaming, social media and phome use, TV, part time jobs.
- Over playing – especially in young football (soccer) players, will often be asked to play in 3-4 games per week, by teams outside the college environemnt,
- Poor Diet – choosing to eat poor foods, both in composition and quality.
Looking at these challenges I haven’t mentioned load, RPE, m/s, HRV or any other of the scientific metrics that are now available to track. In an ideal world I would look to these to manage the demand of training, but they would simply add more data for little to no value.
Firstly they don’t really address any of the major issues I have listed, which is where the focus must be. Secondly, the training we focus on is less physiologically driven. The time in training we get with our athletes is more like a curriculum than a periodised training plan. The sport coaches are focused on the technical skills the players are missing, having usually come from non-professional programs. Equally, from a strength and conditioning perspective, there is little heavy loading, especially initially as the athletes lack the movement skills to train hard. Therefore the demands of our sessions are significantly lower, than we would ideally prescribe, until the athletes have at least a base level of technical proficiency to perform more intense sessions.
If we review the training we offer and the fatigue we see, to the inexperienced coach they would not match. However, what I know now is that the lack of development we see from our programs lies outside of that program. Most players will often choose to train and play for other clubs, often on consecutive days. This will then be coupled with late nights, often being mentally stimulated immediately before trying to sleep, through social media and gaming. Finally, young student-athletes don’t usually make effective food choices. Resulting in a lot of physiological and mental stimulation with very little effort put towards recovery and restoration.
Please note here I haven’t included academics in the stressors, as most of them leave it all till the end of the year and back load to the stress until the season has finished. Why, I have no idea, it seems it is part of the secret student handbook they all receive when they start to annoy lecturers. *Rant over*
So I have to try to focus on aspects of recovery that will have the biggest impact on the adaptive process, take least amount of time for the students to perform and allow quick and simple feedback where needed.
In a college we do have some access to more scientific analysis, but as I mention they are not fit for this purpose, all I need is a tape measure, spreadsheet, and the students mobile phones.
Twice a week (mon + Fri) we will track the following metrics.
- Mass (inc change of mass, between weeks and within weeks) change of mass per se is not a seen as either positive or negative at this point, but large changes in either direction are.
- Sleep – they are awarded a sleep score based on the formula (length x quality) – 64. Quality is marked 1-10. I minus 64, as it is 8×8, I have set the benchmark of 8 hours sleep of a quality of 8. The athletes aren’t aware of this, to prevent them trying to fix the scores. I also encourage they use a sleep and take the data direct from their analysis.
- Broad Jump – simple stand and jump test, looking at the changes week to week and within weeks.
- Self reporting questionnaire
- Soreness
- Fatigue
- Frustration
- Tiredness
- cheerfulness
- excitement
These scores to combine to give me indicators of physiological, psychological and sleep state, which then all feed in to the athletes training status.
Having an overall score is useful as a conversation starter with the athlete. I am not looking at making knee jerk reactions about pulling players out of training or games or ripping up training plans. However, it is good to try and find out a bit more about the underlying mechanisms behind low scores. That is not to say we don’t respond with adapting training, but we need to make sure that the player is being helped to manage their lifestyle better, so they can improve through our program.
It can also generate data about trends with players and highlight were periods of the year may have an influence, as we fit an athletic and academic calendar together, there should be stress bottlenecks.
The key message I have learned over years of listening to others and making my own mistakes is that monitoring is about identifying what key things will make a difference to your athletes and what is the most effective and efficient way of collecting it and getting back to the athletes.
Finally, if you are using a spread sheet model, spend the off season, making it and refining it, especially the way in which it outputs. Have every day/week set out ready to go, doing it week by week in season, just adds another hassle that will detract from your coaching which will mean you will eventually stop doing it.
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