Athlete Management System

Athlete management system (AMS) is the process of monitoring an athlete by collecting data
on a regular basis and documenting it, which are correlated and analysed. The frequency of
data collection could vary from collecting data every training session, match, daily or weekly.

Monitoring athletes can provide useful information regarding

1. Training
2. Injury
3. Performance

Basic functions of AMS:

 It can help to determine if the athletes are appropriately adapting to the training
program.
 It can help understand the training and recovery processes of athletes.
 Assess physiological and psychological fatigue.
 Manage workloads during training and competition.

This will help to enhance performance and reduce the risks of overtraining and
injuries by observing trends and changes in the data collected.

Athlete monitoring data can be classified as external and internal loads.

 External loads refers to the physical work done by the athlete in the form of
movement.
 External loads can be measured/ monitored using Global Positioning System
(GPS) devices and suits which can be worn by athletes. These devices often
contains a built in accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer that helps to
measure distance covered, speed zones, maximum speed, accelerations,
impacts and calculate training loads.

 Internal loads are physiological stress on the system.

 Internal loads can be measured using heart rate monitors which helps to
analyse heart rate responses to training (such as heart rate zones, heart rate
variability), Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE), lactate thresholds, sleep
tracking and questionnaires that can be used to assess physiological and
psychological fatigue.
Sometimes monitoring data can be classified as subjective and objective data.
 Subjective data is what the athlete reports and can be collected using questionnaires or
simply the athlete communicating about how he feels.
 Objective data on the other hand is what is observed or measured by the coach or
sport scientist.
Together subjective and objective data can be used to efficiently train the athlete and
reduce fatigue and injuries.

All athlete management systems are typically going to cover off these areas:
•Automatically collect data from your different technologies, centralizing information
into one system.
•Enable you to combine different data points for analysis and visualize results in
dashboard reports.
•The ability to use templated workflows for data analysis or choose to build your own so
you can adjust the way you are analyzing and visualizing your data at any time.
•Enable you to create, email and print reports for coaches or front office staff.
•Manage different teams and sports (or regiments if you’re in the tactical space) under the
one account.
•Enable you to collect information FROM your athletes as well as deliver information TO
your athletes. This could be via an app, online portal, texts or alerts – or preferably, all of
the above.

Athlete management system captures data from a variety of sources including athlete entered
questionnaires, automated integration of wellbeing and monitoring tools, and purpose built
custom applications. These data sources allow for further analysis that provide athletes,
coaches and sports scientists with alerts, reports and visualisations to better facilitate
communication and decision making.
Prior to collecting athlete monitoring data a range of factors should be considered such as
which method would be most appropriate in assessing training, performance and health, how
the data will be collected, potential limitations of variables (such as validity and reliability),
how these data can be effectively reported to coaches and athletes, and to make informed
decisions depending on the context of the sport and the aims of the monitoring system.
There are commercial athlete monitoring softwares, which can be a secure and effective
method to store, analyse and present data, however it can also be done using programs such
as Microsoft Excel and R Studio software.
GPS
Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite constellation supporting highly accurate
positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) measurements worldwide.
In sports GPS is used as an Electronic Performance and Tracking System device, that tracks
athlete’s movement on the field during training and competition and collects huge amounts of
data on their performance.
These are wearable devices that are generally placed on the athletes torso, which contains
sensors that tracks various metrics and stores and transfers data. There are 4 major sensors in
these devices, they are: accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer and a GPS. The
accelerometer measures the acceleration of the body (the device that is placed on the body),
gyroscope measures the orientation and the angular velocity, magnetometer which uses the
Earth's magnetic field to provide direction to the data from the accelerometer and a GPS that
with satellite positioning information.
The data that GPS trackers collect differs based on what the devise provides, the most
common data that are tracked are:
 Total distance covered
 Average running speed
 Maximum speed
 Total sprinting distance
 Average acceleration time
 Average deceleration time
 Heart rate (to identify athlete's work rate)
 Positioning on the field
 Time of high intensity play
 Time of low intensity play
 Athlete's load (the demand on an athlete's body)
 G-Force / impact data (for impact sports)

Uses of GPS trackers:

 Increase in training frequency, volume, intensity and game play without adequate rest
and recovery can lead to overtraining and injuries. The GPS tracking devices can help
to monitor the athletes workloads, to optimize training and performance, and reduce
fatigue and injury rates.

 It can help to individualize training programs, for example two athletes could run a
specific distance in a same time but their heart rates could vary, these devices will
 enable the coach or sports scientist to identify this difference and look closer into the
loads that the athlete experiences.

 The data can also map a player's positioning on field to help identify the most
frequent spaces covered and provide insights on how well various areas were utilised.
This can then provide a valuable information to adapt training and develop players
according to their physical and tactical needs.

 The use of performance data can aid to make more informed coaching and tactical
decisions in games.

 It can also be used to give objective performance feedback to athletes using the player
workload data obtained from matches.

Some of the iconic GPS tracking technology providers are:

 Catapult
 PlayerTek
 StatSport
 GPSports
 GPEXE
References