As we dive into the second half of term and deeper into the new school year, the need to revisit our systems now that (almost) everything is back up and running post-COVID has been highlighted. In fact, this weekend alone, we have had students competing locally in FOBISIA volleyball and internationally at SEASAC football in Singapore. Not only has this period allowed us to see how robust our systems actually are, it has provided a chance to reflect on what we are currently doing and ask, "What works and why?" To be more specific, "what benefits and impacts our students and school sports programme the most?" One thing that has been hugely helpful is the monitoring and communication of wellness and workload data.
How Much Are They Actually Doing?
This is a question that I have found myself asking since the very start of my time working in schools. Student-athletes are required to wear many hats and spin multiple plates. The combination of academia, social relationships, sporting performance, and physical and mental wellbeing is an incredibly complex beast that can have huge repercussions if not managed effectively. So, how can we begin to understand exactly what is being asked of our student-athletes and what kind of effect it could have on them?
If we can begin to understand this, we can begin to offer a strength and conditioning programme (and a wider sports programme) that is truly best suited to their needs. Further, we can begin to tailor our programme for future years and put structures in place to help negate these negative factors.
What Has Worked Well?
The dashboard shown below (Figure 1) is the one we currently use with our varsity football teams. It is automatically shared with all coaches twice a week, with the option to dig deeper whenever necessary. It's probably variation number 52 (I stopped counting), and we've already identified a few future changes. The dashboard displays general and specific wellness metrics, RPE load, areas of soreness, and current injury status.
Wellness Metrics
A Google Form is used to collect wellness data twice a week. Students are asked to score themselves 1–5 over various criteria, with 1 being poor and 5 being good. A total score of 13 or less is immediately flagged and reported to all coaching staff as well as our school's wellness team. In addition to this immediate feedback, we compare the students' averages to their own personal scores throughout the year. This allows us to see how they compare to their own individual scores, rather than just the group as a whole. This double approach has allowed us to adjust training as a whole when necessary, while also keeping an eye on those who may have been flagged.
RPE Load
RPE load, like wellness, is collected using a Google Form. Students rate sessions on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being easy and 10 being very intense. This score is then multiplied by the total number of minutes spent training. This gives us an arbitrary unit of internal workload. Students are required to complete this form after each gym, training session, and game. To be completely honest, this has proven to be the most difficult factor to implement. Students frequently forget to submit a score, and coaching staff forget to remind them from time to time. This is understandable given that we often have double sessions at school and students arriving or leaving to complete other responsibilities. Moving forward, we plan on having QR codes on display around training sessions to remind coaches and students to access the form when leaving.
Injuries, Soreness, Anything to Add?
These three factors are collected from a combination of sources. The Google forms all have open questions for students to add any comments, and coaches and staff can all log injuries and concerns on a central database.
Soreness simply allows us as S&C staff to adjust training accordingly and highlight potential areas of overload in our programming.
All of our rehab and return-to-play protocols have exit criteria. meaning students need to pass a number of assessments to return to partial and/or full training. Having these on display simply allows coaches to have a full snapshot of any student at any time.
Moving Forward
While this has been effective, it is far from the final product or solution. As the year progresses, we hope to expand these dashboards and data collection to all of our performance sports. Lower year groups and training ages will also be introduced to the wellness questionnaires.
Furthermore, we are exploring combining this subjective data with more objective measures such as GPS to improve our understanding of what school sport, fixtures, and training entail.
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