Fatigue is a hot topic among coaches these days. Coaches are beginning to understand how fatigue impacts their players and their team’s performance. Countless studies have been done to educate coaches about the importance of rest, freshness and recovery.
But how do you really know your players are fatigued? It’s one thing to know about fatigue. It’s another to know how to spot it in your athletes.
For the record, the National Institute of Health lists these potential symptoms of fatigue:
- Increased resting heart rate.
- Reduced performance and poor recovery.
- Increased perception of effort.
- Sudden weight loss.
- Loss of appetite.
- Increased risk of illness.
- Loss of enjoyment in training.
- Sleep and/or mood disturbances.
The Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) is a widely accepted method of measuring fatigue in your athletes. Perceived exertion is how hard athletes feel like their body is working. It is based what an athlete feels during physical activity — increased heart rate, increased respiration or breathing rate, increased sweating, and muscle fatigue.
With DRIVN, it’s simple to track RPE and other important data. To get to the heart of the matter, knowing how and what to measure is even more important.
“Everything is measurable,” said Darcy Norman, Director of Performance at AS Roma and a DRIVN user. “You just have to decide what you want to measure and what it’s going to tell you. Sometimes you start measuring and you get information different from what you thought you’d get.
“DRIVN makes it very simple because everyone, all the players, can be responsible for their own data, or the coach can enter in data for each player,” added Norman. “Then you have that data in one place you can always reference. With the trackers and the data sheets, you can look at that data and refer to it over time.”
All of the necessary data can be entered and collected in DRIVN so it is stored in one place for easy use. With DRIVN, trainers, coaches, and sports performance professionals can create player cards that combine wearable and workout data, plot injuries with body metrics and provide deep insights into what’s happening.
“DRIVN has given me an objective way to look at all my team’s data,” said Craig Von Wielligh, Director of Sports Performance at Global Premier Soccer. “I can see trends, spot problems and make real time adjustments to our workouts and game preparation.”
Start tracking data on your team today with our free 30 day trial.