Helping ULBC increase efficiency of training through morning monitoring

In late 2015 we added a new feature in Rowe.rs that allowed coaches to produce a report of all their athletes morning monitoring data. This report gives coaches traffic lights to assert if there have been any notable changes to an athletes monitoring.

Teams use morning monitoring to see what impact the increased work load in particular on training camps has on athletes and to spot any illness or large drops in weight for example.

We caught up with University of London Boat Club to see how their annual winter training camp in Avis went. Avis is the home to Great Britain, Germany, Norway, Denmark and many overs for their winter and summer camps.

During this camp ULBC got to use our new morning monitoring report. Previously this would have been on a piece of paper or on a spreadsheet.

Having it in a report format was a great way to keep an eye on athletes. It was interesting to see the data flow in as the athletes inputted their scores whilst having their breakfast — Phil Gray, Chief Coach at ULBC

At breakfast all the athletes would complete their morning monitoring on their phones. During breakfast the coaches would check their phones and see who was ready to train or who needed a break or just a check up from the coach.

For every athlete the coach receives a set of 6 traffic lights which can be:

Green: All is good
Amber: Slight change
Red: Major change

Having this knowledge allowed the coaches to speak to athletes who were amber or red to see if there was anything wrong. This conversation gave the coaches a clearer idea of whether this athlete should train, be rested or was about to be ill.

On the athletes dashboard the following is available to fill in:

Waking HR
Standing HR
Weight
Hours of Sleep
Sleep Quality (%)
Perceived Shape (%)

The ease of data entry meant that the data was collected, stored and available for review by all the coaches on the camp.

Over ULBC’s 8 day camp they were able help athletes train effectively, in one case an athlete was given the afternoon off because of the insight of the traffic lights. Had the data not been there the athlete may have lost more than just the 1 session.

We will be writing more case studies how Rowe.rs features have been helping our users. If you’d like to learn more about Rowe.rs visit our website or you can email us at info@rowe.rs

University of London Boat Club is a GB Rowing Team High Performance Centre funded by the National Lottery and UK Sport.

Rowe.rs is an online platform for rowing teams to manage their training data. Built by former coaches and athletes.