Physical training programs aim to make athletes more efficient in terms of internal:external ratios i.e. less stress for more output. In its simplest form, feedback to coaches should explain two things:
- How much work the athlete has performed
- How hard the athlete has worked
Two metrics which will address these questions are ‘volume’ and ‘intensity’. These are particularly useful metrics to use when introducing our technology to coaches, because they can relate directly to the questions above, particularly when data is fed back relative to a known quantity e.g. a match.
You could feed back that an athlete has completed 60% of a match at 80% of normal match intensity, and it will resonate with athletes and coaches. The complexity of the systems used to report volume and intensity can increase with the sophistication of the technology used.