It’s that time again for summer workouts. Coaches are sending them out to prospective student-athletes, hoping they are strictly followed so their players report to pre-season training in top condition.
The programs, most likely arrive in the player’s email boxes with a PDF attached. As a coach, do you ever wish you could simply put workout items and details on the player’s calendar with diagrams and videos attached and a method to see if the workout was followed?
You can with DRIVN. And you can do more. You can have your players enter data by completing questionnaires at regular intervals so a historical record is collected on how they felt on a certain day, what they are eating and drinking, how long they spent on the program, or anything you desire.
But why stop there? Continue it through the season. When you hit that point in the year when your team is underperforming – and you know it’s coming – take a look at the data players have entered and look for reasons why.
“You see this a lot in professional sports,” says Darcy Norman, Director of Performance for AS Roma and a DRIVN user. “A team has a poor performance and they look bad. The fans and the media will start saying they aren’t fit. Well it’s the middle of the season and you know they are fit, so that’s not the problem. The problem might be that they are not fresh. They might be a little over-trained. Data helps you control the narrative a lot better instead of a pre-conceived notion of what people think is happening.
“A simple test is to have the players run four laps around a track before the season. You get a range. You can do the test throughout the season, maybe once a month. You can compare it to later in the season. Compare players at different points in the season.
“If you are three months into a season, and a guy runs a time and it’s terrible compared to other points in the season, you have to ask yourself why his time is bad. Is he not motivated?” adds Norman. “Is it bad because he’s not fresh. Certainly, he is fit. He’s three months into the season and he is training every day. Has he put on weight lately.”
With DRIVN, all the information entered is stored for later use. Charts can be generated by team or individual that gives coaches a historical record, and they can refer to a point in time when a player or team was playing well.
“Everything is measurable. You just have to decide what you want to measure, what it’s going to tell you. Sometimes you start measuring and you get information different from what you thought you’d get.
“The information collected is more valuable when you are able to compare it to other information you have collected on a player.”