What Can Player Load Tell Me About Athlete Work?

Coaches, analysts and sports scientists are always striving to quantify the performance of their athletes, but vast quantities of information can make it easy to get lost in an avalanche of data without unearthing the most powerful insights. 

MEASURING ATHLETE WORK 

One parameter that empowers time-poor coaches, scientists and analysts alike is Catapult’s Player Load metric. In scientific terms, Player Load is instantaneous rate of change of acceleration divided by a scaling factor. In coaching terms, it is a measure of your athlete’s work. 

Developed in conjunction with the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS), Player Load measures work performed independent of distance, however well correlated they may be. This leaves you with a single number – obtainable indoors and outdoors – that provides an objective view of an athlete’s workload at any given time. 

Player Load is measured instantaneously (an athlete’s work at that second) and cumulatively (total work over a session). Because heel strike force generates vertical accelerations which feed into the formula, Player Load is highly correlated with distance for athletes whose sport involves a significant amount of  locomotive movement. 

CONTEXT AND VALIDITY

Distance and speed metrics are interesting with the appropriate context, but without that context they can be limiting as they don’t capture movement and impact. Giving a more complete picture of the work an athlete gets through, Player Load enables you to personalise and periodise individual athlete loads. 

If a coach is seeking a quick summary of an athlete’s work, then Player Load is able to provide that. The metric can also be used to inform far more detailed analysis, with analysts being able to take the number, integrate it with other metrics, and devise their own custom parameters for deeper investigation. 

Validated in many independent research papers, Player Load is an easy-to-use solution for scientifically taking the guesswork out of athlete management, and can form a key reference point in your athlete monitoring process.