FIVE WAYS TO USE PLAYERTEK

Collecting performance data can be a huge benefit to players, coaches and trainers. Every team
is looking for a new way to gain an edge, keep players safe and do everything they can to avoid
injuries. You may have years of experience, but it’s still challenging to monitor and evaluate each
player for every practice and game using the eye test.

There are five ways you can use your objective data when analyzing each session.

Validating Coach’s Philosophy

You have a plan in place to prepare for games. The goal for your athletes is to reach peak
performance during competition. In theory, if game speed is 100%, players should be training in
reference to what they do in games. Be aware that training can be above or below 100% based on
your goals. An example training plan for a soccer team may look like the following based on a game
played on Saturday:
Monday – 50%
Tuesday – 90-100%
Wednesday – 90-100%
Thursday – Off
Friday – 50-60%
Saturday – Game 100%
Sunday – Off

With PlayerTek, you can quickly identify whether your team achieved the daily goals compared to
a game value. Session Score along with volume and intensity metrics are a good way to identify if
your team reached its goal for the day.

Keep Athletes Accountable

During the season, you can use a number of different methods to validate how hard your athletes
are working. With PlayerTek, you can use objective data daily to see if players are consistently hitting
their benchmark numbers and getting better throughout the season.
Below you can see an athlete consistently increasing speed with each practice. Each training
session he is near 17 MPH, which indicates he is attempting to hit max speed each time he steps on
the field.

A red flag would be if the individual hits only 13 or 14 MPH during similar drills or training days. If this
were to happen you could have a conversation with the athlete and present the data to see what
might be the reason for the lower numbers.

Talent Identification

A great way to see who is ready for the first team, starting five, or varsity roster is to compare
players at all levels. For example, if you have enough devices to track your athletes at all levels
(freshman, JV or varsity) you can compare them to see if they are ready to perform at the next
level.
PlayerTek uses Session Comparisons to compare players against themselves in different drills or
halves and even against different players on the team. You can see who has better performances
to help determine who is deserving of that open spot on the first team or starting line-up.
 Recruiting
A great way for players to get recognized during the season is to perform at their best when no one
is watching. Game film is great, but what about when the talent scout isn’t watching or there isn’t a
video recording to send to college or pro coaches?

PlayerTek is a great tool to capture the daily training sessions of each athlete looking to play at
the next level and present metrics to interested schools and programs who also use the system.
Coaches at college and pro levels are very familiar with GPS tracking and understand how
important it is to evaluate players not only during competition, but also through the daily grind of
training sessions.

With PlayerTek’s Squad Season Chart coaches can look at how players compare to the entire team
on each practice or game.

Injury Prevention/Return to Play

PlayerTek can provide feedback to coaches on levels of volume and intensity each player is
exposed to on a daily basis. Total distance, sprint distance, top speed and PlayerLoad will give you
great insight on how hard or easy the session was for the athlete.
This will depend on your goals, but typically teams want to avoid 3-4 consecutive days of heavy
loading. A quick analysis of PlayerTek metrics will help identify when the athlete is being overloaded
during consecutive days.

Another nice use of PlayerTek comes from when players are recovering from an injury. You can
see when players are training at similar levels compared to pre-injury and make a more informed
decision when the athlete is back to 100% based on the objective data. The images below show an
athlete during training before an ankle injury and after the injury.
The first image shows a higher number of explosive movements in the five-minute break down
compared to the second image which is post-injury.