New study highlights benefits of monitoring
A very interesting article published online in January this year is of particular interest to those using monitoring systems, or currently considering introducing a system to keep track of athletes, as it underlines the importance of such an approach. In The training-injury prevention paradox: should athletes be training smarter and harder? Tim J Gabbett address the age-old question of the relationship between training and injury prevention. The findings of this extensive study point to a definite benefit in monitoring an athlete’s routine. He concludes that while there is a link between extensive training loads and injury, the study illustrates that such problems may arise as a result of the incorrect training regime, rather than being with the actual training itself.
Strong case for monitoring
The findings of Gabbett’s study create a very strong case for careful monitoring of athletes. There is a clear need to ensure that athletes are following the correct training programme, doing sufficient training to build up their physical capacities or to ensure that they aren’t doing too little training. Gabbett begins by raising the belief held in some sections that higher injury rates are as a result of a higher training load, but highlights the evidence that training also helps protect against injury. He points out that a sustained period of training before an initial injury can reduce the risk of subsequent injury and chronic workloads can decrease injury risk. Also, he adds that athletes need to train hard to build up the physical attributes required to reduce injury risk. He also states that under-training can lead to an increased injury risk. In dealing with the ‘Training-Injury Prevention Paradox’ model, he continues to say that injuries are more likely to result from inappropriate training and that non-contact injuries more likely to be caused by excessive and rapid increases in training. He argues that the way to deal with this problem is through monitoring of an athlete’s training programme.
If training load is an important determinant of injury, it must be accurately measured up to twice daily and over periods of weeks and months (a season). This paper outlines ways of monitoring training load (‘internal’ and ‘external’ loads) and suggests capturing both recent (‘acute’) training loads and more medium-term (‘chronic’) training loads to best capture the player’s training burden. I describe the critical variable – acute:chronic workload ratio – as a best practice predictor of training-related injuries. This provides the foundation for interventions to reduce players risk, and thus, time-loss injuries
Benefits of monitoring
Gabbett summarizes his findings by revealing that appropriate training loads will assist in improving levels of fitness, and as a consequence will provide protection against injury. The benefits of this are that increased physical condition will improve individual performance and in team sports, ensure a higher proportion of players available every week. He continues to point out that the benefits of monitoring in the future will allow practitioners to determine if athletes are in a state of ‘fitness’ or ‘fatigue’, and also allows them to develop individual training programmes to athletes. To sum up his views on this crucial area of athlete preparation, Gabbett states:
Excessive and rapid increases in training loads are likely responsible for a large proportion of non-contact, soft-tissue injuries. However, physically hard (and appropriate) training develops physical qualities, which in turn protects against injuries. This paper highlights the importance of monitoring training load, including the load that athletes are prepared for (by calculating the acute:chronic workload ratio), as a best practice approach to the long-term reduction of training-related injuries.
Keeping track of an athlete’s routine not only in terms of training, but also nutrition and sleep along with overall well-being is a facility offered by Metrift and one that has been highly successful when implemented in High Schools and Colleges throughout the United States, and with sports teams right across the globe.
Dr. H. James Harrington
References
About Metrifit
Metrifit is an athlete monitoring system that gathers subjective and objective information from both coaches and athletes in a simple but effective manner with intelligent visualization helping coaches and athletes to act on that data. Why not have a look at our Ready to Perform product and gain insight on the physical and mental state of your athletes through our daily wellbeing questionnaire? To find out more visit our Metrifit Product Overview page or get in touch for a free demo.
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Graham Williams
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"The ability to acutely monitor stress and recovery and make the correct adjustments was critical to our health and performance throughout the NCAA tournament. Metrifit has a very strong educational component. With the information we get, I am able to clearly understand the habits and behaviors of our athletes, and how they may be impacting performance."
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Erik Helland
Director of Strength & Conditioning and Head Strength Coach Men’s basketball, University of Wisconsin
https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/erik-helland/
"Metrifit provides immediate insight and feedback on the physical and mental states of the student-athletes. It allows us to adjust practices and training sessions to accurately meet needs. We have been able to identify potential injury concerns, track current injury status and monitor return to play progress."
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Head Volley Ball Coach, Southern Illinois University
https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/kari-thompson/
"The cutting edge technology of Metrifit enables Managers, Coaches and Players to use this innovative technology to gain these crucial percentage points over their opponents in a technologically advanced yet easy to use web-based platform. The data collated on a daily basis greatly informs Management Teams while the educational aspect of the system really appeals to modern day athletes who are constantly looking for that extra edge."
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Cian O’Neill
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https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/cian-oneill-short/
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https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/brian-clarke/
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https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/derek-bol/
"While working with the Clare Senior Hurling team (2012-2014), Horse Sport Ireland (U25 European Eventing Champions) and currently with the Limerick Senior Hurling Team, Metrifit provides our team with critical information across a number of essential aspects of elite athletic performance. You don’t really know how your players are responding to training stimuli unless you have daily data and Metrifit provides and easy to use and highly effective means of finding this critical information."
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https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/joe-oconnor/
"What’s more impressive is the ability to utilize the basics but at the same time have the capability to explore detailed and intricate correlative data points that helps us as coaches gain the most from our athletes. Metrifit has also served as an easy communications hub to ensure essential information is passed to the appropriate team. We are excited to what the future from Metrifit will bring."
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https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/michael-torres-short/
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https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/ryan-osborn/
"The holistic approach of medical, physical, emotional and even tech/tactical; bringing together what we need to monitor and evaluate our University players. “If you can’t measure it – it doesn’t exist.” I know we were the first Canadian University to use the program and I know many more will be asking for it in the future! I highly recommend Metrifit."
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https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/tino-fusco-b-sc-chpc/
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https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/yvonne-treacy-short/
"Metrifit is an outstanding platform to track your athletes’ wellness. It’s simple to use, easy to implement and gives outstanding information on your athlete’s subjective wellness which can be used to assign training loads. I highly recommend Metrifit for any coach looking to begin implementing technology into their program"
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https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/brijesh-patel/
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https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/emma-hawke/
“I have been using Metrifit for the past number of years and I have found it to be an excellent piece of software. It is extremely easy to use and has proved very beneficial in preparing myself for competition. The ability to view my health and wellbeing stats everyday and see how this influences my performance in both practice and competition has been very helpful. I have been able to put more effort into key areas such as fluid intake, sleep and balanced golf practice and training. Having the ability to view my detailed stats helps me to understand exactly where I am and how I need to adjust my training or health choices. I have found using Metrifit this past year has been a crucial help for me to play well. As I now have turned 50 I am playing on The Champions tour in the USA and have played well during my first year. Metrifit has been as important as my golf equipment in achieving that success.”
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Associate Director of Strength & Conditioning
Director of Olympic Strength & Conditioning
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https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/kevin-schultz-full/
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"Metrifit has been instrumental in helping our international Managers, Coaches and Medical teams to identify players who require modifications in training loads or who are struggling with some aspect of their preparation for, or recovery from, training and matches. One of the big strengths of this technology is that it allows our Managers and Medical teams to monitor players both during international competition and outside of these times."
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Dan Horan
Head of Fitness for International Football/Fitness Coach Men's Senior Team
Football Association of Ireland
https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/dan-horan-short/
"The visualisation of data allows for easy discussion between athletes, performance staff and medical teams and offers the potential to predict and avoid issues which could hamper performance. Over the year the data has proven instrumental in our critical decision making. Metrifit is a excellent monitoring tool however the unsung additional aspect is the fantastic and tireless customer support."
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Strength Coach
Nederlandse Ski Vereniging (Netherlands Ski/Snowboard Team)
https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/robert-walsh-short-testimonial/
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Lee Stutely
Team Manager and Athlete Support Services Coordinator at Great Britain Wheelchair Rugby
https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/lee-stutely/
"Gaelic football is an intermittent high-intensity collision-based field sport requiring high levels of endurance, strength, power, agility, and speed as well as proficiency with gaelic-related skills. These components comprise the training modalities used at the elite level and the monitoring of such a vast range of modalities is central to peak performance. The athlete monitoring tool Metrifit allows us to do this and can keep us one step ahead of our competitors."
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Jason McGahan
Sports Scientist, Kildare Football, PhD Sports Science Researcher
https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/jason-mcgahan/
“Metrifit has allowed us to gain better insight on our athletes and their individual stress response to training and outside factors. This has helped us to make daily adjustments when necessary, to further enhance their development which has led to higher performance levels, faster recovery, and a reduction in injuries. The new lifestyle profiling survey has been an invaluable insight into the lifestyle habits of my athletes and has helped focus on key areas that can be improved, benefiting athletes on their performance journey.“
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Assistant S&C Coach, Tulane University
https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/dan-rickaby/
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Aaron Mansfield
Head Coach, LMU Lions, Loyola Marymount University
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"The Metrifit RTP platform is an excellent tool to monitor, evaluate and make the right decisions for your athlete’s well being and performance. It enables coaches and athletes to track and sift through all the variables that underpin well being and performance on a day to day basis and to address an issue or potential issue in real time. A simply wonderful product."
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Dr. Dale Richardson
CEO Achieve Total Performance Pty Ltd
https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/dale-richardson/
"When COVID altered college athletics as we knew it, Metrifit came to the rescue. This intuitive athlete monitoring, health and well-being system provides the athlete, coach, and sports medicine staff a way to monitor and balance the physical, emotional, health and well-being of our athlete’s. Metrifit provided that calm in the middle of the perfect storm for our entire athletic department for the future. Thank you to the entire Metrifit family for assisting our department with a seamless process."
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Jennifer McIntosh
Head Athletic Trainer, Colorado School of Mines
https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/jennifer-mcintosh/
"Metrifit is an amazingly easy-to-use yet comprehensive monitoring tool for training and recovery! The elite athletes we work with are able track and monitor their situations and states daily, in order to maximize their performance loads and recovery practices. This also helps our coaches customize the training programs more effectively. I'd recommend this for any serious team / athlete or coach in wanting to bring out the very best in their long-term performances! "
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Edgar K. Tham
Founder and Chief Sport & Performance Psychologist, SportPsych Consulting (Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines)
https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/edgar-k-tham-2/
"Metrifit has been used to gain a more in-depth insight into our student-athlete’s progressive athletic development and balance relative to their particular sporting and training activities, academic studies and total load. Metrifit doesn’t just help with optimising our Sports Scholarship students’ athletic performance. It assists us in helping them get the balance right between their sporting activities and academic studies."
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2017-06-12T13:58:58+01:00
Richard Deuchrass
Lincoln University Athletic Performance Manager
https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/richard-deuchrass/
"We have been using Metrifit for the past season at Cornish Pirates. It has been greatly beneficial for us to have our wellness and load management data on one easy to access system. We have found this invaluable over the past season whereby Coaches, Physios and Strength and conditioning coaches can monitor both the psychological and physiological load of our athletes on a daily basis."
Metrifit Athlete Monitoring System
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Paul Cremin
Head Physiotherapist, Cornish Pirates Rugby Club
https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/paul-cremin-short/
"Metrifit has been hugely beneficial in supporting our coaches and back room staff to track and monitor our players training loads, performance and readiness to train. Having a one-stop shop for collating all relevant information across a holistic picture of the player allows us to help prevent burnout, injury and provide timely feedback and communication to all."
Metrifit Athlete Monitoring System
2017-06-12T14:01:46+01:00
Eamonn Fitzmaurice
Kerry Senior Football, Manager
https://metrifit.com/blog/testimonials/eamonn-fitzmaurice/
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