There is a lot of information coaches need to know about their players, and many simply don’t have the time and energy to rifle through paperwork for every single player. That process impedes their strategizing ability and significantly impacts the team. CoachMePlus, a new system that compiles all of this information into one database, puts those troubles to bed.
CoachMePlus, as stated on the software’s website, “positions your organization to respond to the rapidly changing world of sports science by tracking athlete information with one centralized system. This software allows you to quickly uncover performance trends to evaluate game-day readiness. You’ll spend more time with your athlete and less time with a spreadsheet.” The last sentence is most important. With CoachMePlus compiling all of the athletes’ information, coaches can spend more specified time with athletes, knowing they already have everything necessary to make game-time decisions.
In 2003, President and Co-Founder, Kevin Dawidowicz, launched CoachMePlus by working with the Buffalo Sabres on their offseason training program. The company was asked to produce an interactive CD for the Sabres workout program. Their strength and conditioning coach knew that “most athletes wouldn’t end up reading (the paper version); it usually ended up in a pile somewhere,” which is why he asked for the CD.
“I understood all of his terminology and his processes [through his] years of experience in strength and conditioning and weight-lifting in the gym,” according Dawidowicz in our interview with him.
Dawidowicz’s wanted to turn this CD into a “fully interactive experience,” and seven years later, they “had the ability to take some risks and build this online version of the system. We took the experience of several personal trainers and turned it into the online prototype of the system,” commented Dawidowicz.
The system skyrocketed, as Dawidowicz and his partner went to the NHL Combine and immediately signed two teams, the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Edmonton Oilers. The signing money allowed them “to develop the product further and basically start doing this thing full time.”
This software comes with nine key features. First and foremost, there is a program builder inside the software. The coach can add exercises and workout routines to certain athletes’ regimens, and track each athlete’s progress. Based on the data, coaches make accurate decisions about each athlete’s regimen, whether that athlete is injured, or whether they are improving.
A secondary feature is the athlete bio page. Designed like a Wikipedia page, this feature allows the athlete to include everything about himself or herself, including contact information, education, medical history, etc.
Third, CoachMePlus includes an athlete management and testing feature. The system keeps track of the athlete’s measurements, including height, weight, waist, etc. Based on these measurements, CoachMePlus creates tests for coaches to use, and compiles the information into one database, eliminating the need for multiple spreadsheets for every athlete. By tracking these results, coaches can see whether athletes are following through on their workouts and diets, and can take appropriate measures to fix any issues.
Three features that go hand-in-hand with one another are the athlete notes, library, and statistics features. The notes feature is a discussion board where coaches can upload notes on athletes on how their daily progressions. These notes are built into a historical timeline.
The athlete library is a media deposit box for every picture, interview, video, etc, that the athlete does. The user can upload pictures, videos, interviews, and progress reports. This feature eliminates the need for heavy filing cabinets, saving time, energy, and space.
Athletes can have their statistics imported into CoachMePlus, as long as their league approves it. Once imported, coaches can compare the statistics with their training data to analyze if the athlete is on the correct regimen.
The final three features of this system include a message platform, hydration tools, and reports and dashboards. The message platform creates an outlet for coaches to correspond with athletes in a public or private message.
The hydration tools feature, based on the athlete’s pre and post-workout weigh-ins, gives the athlete ways to regain those electrolytes lost during the workout. This feature assists proper athletic development. Most athletes don’t know the importance of taking care of themselves post-workout. This feature eliminates that problem by putting the information right in front of the athlete.
The reports and dashboards feature is unique to CoachMePlus. This feature allows for cross-data reports on any two statistics, even ones that seem to have no correlation. These reports are important because coaches can discover new performance trends between different statistics, possibly giving them a competitive advantage.
The CoachMePlus is unique because of its customer-driven approach. “When we built the system, we identified the problem as the coaches told it to us. We didn’t walk in with an expectation of how things needed to be done; we sat and listened to many NHL coaches, owners, and an NFL coach when we signed our first NFL team. From those discussions, we got six or seven different varying experiences with how they saw things that needed to be done. Instead of us building something that was very straightforward, we built a system that was increasingly flexible, and that’s where our biggest difference is,” said Dawidowicz.
Being in such a small market, CoachMePlus needed to differentiate itself from the other players to gain a competitive advantage. They gained an “outsider perspective on the solution when they were told the problem,” and fixed the solution from the outside-in. This customer-driven mindset allowed them to develop more efficiently, because CoachMePlus already knew what the customers wanted; there was no guess work.
This software applies to all levels, but most suits high school level and above because those levels are where you start to see athletes get serious about their performance, training, and health, as well as serious coaches. However, different levels of coaching use the system in different ways.
CoachMePlus is built as “a very robust and large enterprise core system that has switches that you can turn on and off so that you can turn the system into a product that works best for a certain market,” according to Dawidowicz. Whatever a team needs, the software adapts to those needs. Professional teams need a lot of flexibility and developed data, but high school teams just want statistics and facts. The CoachMePlus system can accommodate any style undertaken by a team or coach, using its flexibility as its true advantage.
The system is designed to help three types of managers: strength and conditioning coaches, head coaches, and front office managers. Strength and conditioning coaches, as well as head coaches, save time with this software, because it compiles all of the data on an athlete. From tests to training data to updated performance reports, CoachMePlus organizes everything into one personalized report. Coaches are able to analyze these reports to ensure that “their athletes are complying with their program to make sure that those athletes are ready, healthy, and available to be at their peak performance,” which is the competitive advantage that CoachMePlus provides, according to Dawidowicz.
Front office members can worry less about making sure their coaches have all the information they need. CoachMePlus has clear communication channels that allow for steady information distribution. GMs and ADs can spend more time dealing with administration issues, because they know their coaches have all the information necessary for success.
Besides providing tons of value to its clients, this system gives value to the other products it’s integrated with. Dawidowicz sees CoachMePlus as “a spoke on a wheel or as our own wheel with many different spokes,” and says that “we have to integrate with other operations systems within organizations. Everyone has such a unique way of doing things that if we were to approach from a one way, end all be all type of system, it would absolutely fail.”
These other systems receive value because CoachMePlus helps “provides their information within the context of a larger picture.” These integrated products, such as GPS system and heart rate monitors, need help to display their value beyond their traditional uses, and CoachMePlus does just that by incorporating them into their overall system.
Additionally, this system provides an internal benefit to athletes and an external benefit to teams that use it. Internally, high school athletes looking at colleges and college athletes preparing for the pros can see what drafted athletes before them did to put themselves in that position. They can use those numbers from the CoachMePlus system to motivate themselves to hit those numbers and beyond. Furthermore, athletes can use their own data stored in the system to show a university or a pro team that they are “a dedicated athlete who will follow the program and do what he or she needs to make sure that he or she is performing at his or her best ability,” mentioned Dawidowicz.
Externally, the system displays data from the athletes’ training sessions and tests all around the team facilities, including the weight room, the locker room, the cafeteria, etc. Athletes can see what other athletes are doing and if they are following their plans or slacking off. Dawidowicz pointed out that, “it doesn’t take a coach to come down stairs and yell at the athletes about who didn’t do their thing today. The players will push on each other; the leaders of the team will look at that and say ‘Hey man, you didn’t weigh in today. How are we supposed to hit the field together as a team today if you didn’t do something as simple as that?’” The system not only holds the players accountable to themselves, but to the team as well.
As of May, 2015, CoachMePlus, founded in 2012, has partnered up with over 40 professional and collegiate athletic teams, as well as over 20,000 athletes. The reason for their explosive success is because CoachMePlus takes pride in “keeping those relationships (with clients) confidential.” Dawidowicz states that “it’s about keeping what these organizations do under lock and key. Only through these functions do we build trust and relationships that last, and because of that, coaches are more than happy to open the door to other organizations because they know that we are not divulging what other teams are doing.” Through this simple, yet effective, system of word of mouth, CoachMePlus has gained the largest amount of customers in their market, as well as a reputation for being a loyal provider and a true competitive advantage supplier.
Dawidowicz commented on these recent partnerships in their press release, stating, “Our NCAA clients include some of the most forward-thinking coaches in the sports science industry. The breadth of what CoachMePlus can deliver – from in-season/out-of-season workout assignments and daily monitoring to detailed reports and device integration – is beneficial for all levels of professional, collegiate and high school athletics.”
The CoachMePlus system is still a work in progress, but the initial software has already displayed multiple ways to save an organization time and energy in compiling data on their athletes. This database will continue to develop further, and will gain more ways to track an athlete’s progress, performance, and health along the way. When asked about the future of the product, Dawidowicz offered this, “It’s really more about scalability and efficiency; we built a system that works at all levels. Now, it’s a matter of scaling that model in the most efficient way possible so that coaches are more in control of what they want to see.”