Playoff time in any sport is where success is truly measured, and the point in time where every game matters. Perhaps nothing draws as much attention for as long of a window of time as NCAA’s March Madness. What is often overlooked at this point is that playoffs are when a year’s worth of work comes together, and the payoff of having healthy players successfully managed and competing over the course of the season is the difference between cutting down nets and starting the bus to head home.
Player management for peak performance and injury prevention in sport has become of increasing interest due to the development of software and wearable technologies focusing on sports science. Whether considering an investment in technology or simply following along with your favorite team at home, a better understanding of the implementation of sports science and tech will put you closer to understanding the management of your team’s players, or simply how to use the data you may collect for yourself.
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It is now commonplace to hear of athletes being rested to avoid injury, and frequent articles talk of the development of injury prediction technologies. The rising interest is shifting public opinion away from the idea that sporting success is simply the product of years of hard work, towards a greater understanding that it’s the result of years of hard work performed intelligently – athletes performing the optimal amounts and types of work, at the optimal times over long periods. Ultimately, this is the puzzle that sports scientists and coaches look to solve every day across the globe with the help of technologies, logic, and science.
Monitoring is a just a small piece to the bigger puzzle of developing a plan across a season, and a career. The use of daily monitoring technologies aid in answering three fundamental questions daily:
1) What is the athlete’s capacity to perform work?
2) How hard did the athlete work?
3) What type of stresses did the athlete experience?
Monitoring can answer each of the above questions to ensure better short- and long-term decisions are made in managing the individual within a team to keep athletes on the court or field.
The following diagram provides a summary view of the role and use of monitoring, and subsequent analytics, that has become a major player in the sporting world aimed at more efficient training regimens to keep players performing at the highest level:
- Athlete’s characteristics: Generally, each player enters an environment with a defined, yet evolving, set of physical characteristics (i.e. fitness, athleticism, training background, and injury history, etc.) which defines their needs, potential training response, training tolerance, and likelihood of injury.
- Proactive monitoring: Determining a player’s readiness daily is arguably the single most important element of monitoring and consists of quantifying a number of elements (i.e. soreness, sleep, stress, etc.) to create a complete picture of the individual athlete’s capacity for that day. Appropriately applied, proactive monitoring of readiness ensures that the athlete is training optimally and competing at their peaks.
- Training session/competition: The center of focus, the target is to optimize each training day to maximize competition performance, while at the same time continually developing the athlete and preventing injury. Essentially, every training session and competition must be part of a long-term plan.
- Reactive monitoring: Following a training session or competition, quantifying the physical demands placed on the player is an important element of short- and long-term player management.
- Immediate Data Analysis: The goal is to answer two fundamental questions, 1) Did the athlete’s readiness match their physical experience? 2) Did the coaching staff’s training plan hit the target?
- Long-Term Data Analysis: The goal is to examine data collected in reference to increasing windows of time (i.e. the week, the month) relative to relationships between physical stress and readiness.
- Athlete’s Response: A primary outcome of effectively applied sports science is improved decision-making driven by the athlete’s long-term response with hypothesis driven analytics examining development of physical performance, and where applicable injury.
This cycle, used throughout the season, provides teams the opportunity to bring the lab to the field. In our effort to do so, several questions must be asked prior to investing time and money in a monitoring technology:
- Does the technology measure characteristics specific to the sport? This is the clear starting point in selecting a monitoring technology; the usefulness of the data collected in quantifying sport-specific characteristics of readiness and stress is crucial.
- How accurately does the technology measure these characteristic(s)? The precision of a monitoring system is essential in ensuring characteristics are measured with accuracy. The monitoring system must measure reality.
- What is the level of consistency in the measurement(s)? In order to identify fluctuations or change, knowing the error of a measurement tool is vital; greater the consistency of the measurement tool the higher the ability to recognize change. The result is an increased ability to make informed decisions based on accurate data.
The above questions combine to determine the quality of data, and subsequently the quality of decisions that can be made from this information. When important readiness decisions are made based on this information, it is important to consider that no data is better than bad data.
Finally, the practical integration of information collected must also be considered:
- What level of knowledge and expertise is required to analyze and interpret the information collected and make appropriate decisions relative to a sport? Collecting and analyzing data alone is not enough. Its interpretation, relative to a sport and its sports science underpinnings, is the most important consideration and will guide decision-making within a training system and the coach’s plan.
- Does the investment in the technology, and potentially personnel, match the gains achieved in improved performance, development and injury prevention? Improved decision-making results in financial gains through improved performance, athlete development, and decreased injury. The financial equation that balances investment and return is an important consideration. It is logical to begin with a simple solution, apply it effectively, and build towards increasing complex and detailed technologies.
Athlete monitoring is a part of the larger process integrating sports science in a practical world, and the more complex the setting, the bigger the challenges. As the integration of tech in sports continues to become a centerpiece to discussions, keep in mind that good data applied methodically within a systematic plan allows for the fluidity needed to meet each individual’s needs, and ensure peak performance in competition. In the end, the rigors and demands of competition placed on today’s athlete may derail even the best methods and technologies. Always consider that in today’s sporting world we ask a lot of our athletes from the youth level through collegiate and professional ranks. As exciting as it is to watch championships and tournaments unfold, it is an equally exciting time in sports science and athlete monitoring.
Dr. John Cone has a Ph.D. in kinesiology and M.S. in Exercise Physiology. He has extensive experience in sports working first as a coach and then as a sports scientist in Major League Soccer. He is currently a sports science consultant and educator for the United States Soccer Federation where he most recently developed and delivered the methodology for its professional license for MLS coaches. He is the founder of Fit for 90, a sports science monitoring and consulting company that delivers sports science support and actionable monitoring to International, professional, collegiate and youth teams.