Does monitoring athletes really improve performance?
Data collection and making evidence based decisions for training programing is common practice amongst high performance coaches and more technologies are available than ever to help collect and better understand the data.
Does all the data collection really help our athletes to improve their performance though? To fully understand and making a statement out of it I have dig a little further into this as I’m planning to do a class project on monitoring my athletes using different types of software platforms.
An article review written by Shona L. Halson published in Sports Med in 2014 talks about all the different variables that can be used to monitor training load and subsequent fatigue. In the conclusion section she is mentioning that despite the emerging technologies a single definite tool that is accurate and reliable is not available. The nature of monitoring is very different from one sport to the other which is due to the differences not only in the demands of the sport but also in the individual difference in individual physiological adaptions and responses to exercise. If an accurate and easy to interpret feedback is provided to the athletes and coaches, monitoring can result in enhanced knowledge of training responses and provide further communication between support staff, athletes and coaches and ultimately enhance and athlete’s performance.
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs40279-014-0253-z.pdf
Having read the article by Shona L. Halson I got inspired to increase the data collection within my own program and will implement some of the newest monitoring Technologies. I have discussed some of the parameters this with my Practicum Mentor and we came to the conclusion that it will be imperial to have the buy in form the athletes and they will have to be part of the whole process and understand that it will benefit them. The aim is to use the monitoring as a source of motivation for the athletes to become more accountable but also get more feedback on their current performance. Since a lot of the platform relay on self reporting on things such as sleep and nutrition integrity from the athletes will be important. Using the monitoring tools as a form of communication starters in the daily training environment will be key in my approach of using the technology and applying the science to the art of coaching.