“Not so much a ‘no pain, no gain’ culture anymore in coaching and training. It’s a lot of load monitoring and careful planning, but it also includes making adjustments on the fly.” — Michael Gallivan, ACSM.

In the 2020 Olympics, Naomi Osaka, a multiple grand slam winner, surprised the world when she said she didn’t want to participate in the most anticipated event in sport. From the outside looking in, everything looked okay. She appeared to be prepared and ready for athletic competition, and many just couldn’t understand why she would choose not to perform.

Even before the dust from the Naomi Osaka controversy had settled, four-time gold medalist Simeon Biles would shock the airwaves again. This time, by pulling out of the competition at a time when many said, “her team needed her most.”

The two instances would bring to the surface two discussions the athletic performance and coaching community has been avoiding for years—the balance between subjective wellness and objective measures of performance.

What Is Subjective Wellness?

Recent advances in human performance show that objective measures alone aren’t sufficient to evaluate and diagnose an athlete’s performance. This necessitates the need for the athlete’s own perspective of readiness, also known as subjective wellness. 

Subjective wellness is an athlete’s perception of how they feel. Perception is reality; they might not have a physical reason to underperform, but if they are mentally unfocused and encumbered by stress, mood or expect to perform badly, their performance will likely mirror those thoughts. All types of physical training induce strain on an athlete’s body. That said, there are healthy levels of strain that improve the athlete, as well as chronic unhealthy ones that are unproductive.

Coaches track an athlete’s objective and subjective performance as indicators of the strain on the athlete and whether they are over, optimum, or under training the athlete. A coach can then use this data to adjust load and workouts.

Determining Objective Wellbeing (Load and Threshold) Before Subjective Wellness Is Considered

Subjective wellness can be used to diagnose and fix problems in an athlete’s performance. However, this process is much more efficient if objective wellness (load and recovery) precedes subjective well-being. 

In layman terms, a coach or an athlete can use objective wellness to diagnose performance (find out the “if”) and subjective wellness to get to the root cause of the problem (the “why”). There is no one-size-fits-all approach for determining objective well-being. One of the most efficient ways is by determining the load as shown below:

1. Determine load (for example, you can test vertical jump twice a week.)

To develop an efficient objective measurement process, the schedule should have consistency. For example, the athlete should be tested at the same time each day of each week. This consistency helps to control for other factors such as hormonal levels and body weight that fluctuate throughout the day.

Once you find a preferable day of the week for internal load monitoring, you can then test for vertical jump and come up with a trajectory each week.

If the numbers over time are staying the same – Little or no change in numbers means the athlete’s performance is okay. Moreover, it shows consistency and that the athlete is comfortable with the level of strain during workouts and practice.

If their numbers are improving  – An improvement in numbers is great. It shows that the workouts are effective and that the athlete’s body is responding positively to the workouts. Coaches should take improvements as seriously as they handle deteriorations. The data on why an athlete is making improvements goes a long way in finding ways to further cement those habits.

If their numbers are getting worse – A worsening performance is a cause of concern for all parties. That said, load determination alone doesn’t give a clearer picture. For more insight, the coach should analyze the data from wearable devices.

Analysis of Strain Data from Wearable Devices

If the dashboard on a wearable fitness device reads high strain and low recovery scores, the coach should take a very calculated approach to the matter.

Trainers should consider steering clear of talking points that are complete, conclusive sentences like:

• “You’re not pushing yourself.”
• “Try harder.”
• “You can do better.”

A better alternative would be to ask open-ended questions from a subjective wellness perspective about what’s going on outside the workouts and practice. Topics one can touch on include sleeping patterns, eating patterns, and stress levels.

Where Subjective Wellness Comes In

Subjective wellness adds insight whenever the numbers don’t follow as expected. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the athlete is underperforming; it goes both ways. Context of the data is sometimes more important than the outcomes of the data alone.  Understanding where an athlete is within their performance helps complete the picture. 

Subjective wellness could also come in handy when there are significant improvements in performance. If this is the case, the coach can proceed to find what the athlete is doing differently (outside practice) and encourage it. A trainer should take into account how the athlete feels during load management, and adjust workouts based on stress, sleep and nutrition.

Stress 

An optimum amount of stress can help an athlete prepare, train, and perform at optimum levels. However, an unhealthy amount of stress can impact an athlete’s performance. That said, when determining load and workouts, a coach must have the stress of the athlete in mind.

Sleep

The amount, quality, and pattern of sleep have a significant effect on an athlete’s performance. A Stanford study shows that collegiate basketballers who were able to increase their sleep to 10 hours a night improved their shooting by 9%. That said, data on an athlete’s sleep comes in handy when determining both loads and training intensity. Even more crucial is when a coach is diagnosing fluctuations in performance.

Nutrition

Nutrition is another outside practice variable that has a huge vote on the performance of an athlete. That said, nutrition is a broad area. It covers everything from hydration, supplementation, portions, medications, and diet, all parameters that trainers should put under the spotlight. 

Of all external factors, the nutrition of an athlete is the most crucial for both long-term and short-term performance. Any issues that arise from improper nutrition should be identified and mitigated as quickly as possible.

2. Using wearables to monitor the metabolic rate and sprint times or other loads

Another effective approach to measuring objective well-being is leveraging data from wearables to monitor metabolic rates and sprint times continuously. Both techniques, using wearables and load determination, are crucial in monitoring objective wellness. In fact, they are equally effective, and it’s recommended that trainers use them simultaneously. 

Direct data has fewer external variables and hence allows coaches to err on the side of caution. You need both because someone may feel great despite being at a threshold or tapped out before reaching the expected limit. Both mismatched expectations must be addressed for healthy and sustained growth.

Benefits Beyond Physical Monitoring

The benefits of subjective well-being spill beyond physical monitoring and the development of better practices. Athlete subjective wellness monitoring helps make the life of an athlete better both in practice and outside the court.

Some of its benefits include:

1. Improved Motivation and Well-being

Show me a stressed athlete, and I’ll show you an underperformer. If an athlete is stressed and just going through the motions because the coach is pushing while ignoring the issues, it can lead to burnout.

However, if the coach takes the athlete’s stress and subjective well-being into account and assigns a recovery program, trust is built. The athlete feels genuine concern from the coach and is inclined to work harder for the coach in the future.

2. Self-Awareness

Humans value autonomy and the feeling of being in charge. Self-reporting raises awareness on the athlete’s part about how decisions outside of the gym can affect performance.

With self-reporting through subjective awareness, athletes can see for themselves the consequences of each action they take. An athlete can see for themselves that once they start to eat certain foods, they perform better or worse later. Similarly, if they’ve been sleeping poorly, they will notice that they can’t meet their performance expectations, further showing them that actions have consequences.

This gives them the incentive to address the actual sleep issues and concentrate on plausible causes such as caffeine intake.

3. Better Mental Health 

The mental health question in elite athletes started way before Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles came to the spotlight.

With thousands of fans, supporters, friends, and family, it’s hard for many to believe that athletes sometimes may suffer from depression, loneliness, and have deep-seated issues of their own. To make it worse, objective forms of measurement fail to identify mental health challenges athletes face.

An approach that focuses on mental health, such as subjective well-being, can help identify early signs of deterioration that may slip through the fingers of objective forms of measurement. As a result, athletes get the necessary treatment and counseling early and before it’s too late.

How to Track Subjective Wellness

As you’ve seen above, self-awareness and putting the athlete in the driver’s seat of the subjective wellness process come with several benefits. One of the best ways to track subjective wellness while at the same time offering the athlete both autonomy and self-awareness is using a wellness questionnaire for athletes.

CoachMePlus was founded with the dream of leveraging modern technology to help coaches and athletes achieve their fitness goals. For more information about objective and subjective measurement of athletes’ performance, contact us today, and our teams will be more than willing to help.

Keep Reading:

What does an Athlete Management System do? 

Athlete Management Systems (AMS) are expanding to do more than ever before. But with all the features and integrations, it is important not to lose sight of why AMS systems can be an essential tool to any athletic or fitness organization. Athlete management systems allow coaching relationships to develop outside the traditional constraints of time and proximity. A good coach and athlete relationship is built on trust and understanding the personalized goals of the athlete. By using an AMS, coaches and athletes can develop strong relationships inside and outside of the training facility. 

Note: CoachMePlus is designed as a Human Performance Software that goes beyond an Athlete Management System. To us, a “coach” can refer to a physical therapist, strength and conditioning coach, personal trainer, athletic trainer, military leadership, or other human performance monitoring roles.

The job of an AMS is to allow coaches to communicate and monitor their athletes and provide context to the data that is being collected. Expected functions include the ability to assign workouts in an app, pull in information from wearable devices, and monitor load and progress. These functions are only useful if they are combined to add transparency into the workload and lifestyle of the athlete. Tools like Subjective Wellness Questionnaires and Load Monitoring can be used to help make on-the-fly decisions about training and recovery though the use of alerts, dashboards and reports. 

Benefits of an Athlete Management System

Save Time 

Athlete management systems streamline every step of the coaching process. From testing and programming, to analyzing and adjusting plans. When building a workout plan for an athlete, regularly scheduled set and rep progressions can easily be made into a test for updating key performance indicators such as one-rep-maximum (1RM). 

This allows workouts that are based on 1RM to automatically update with the given information to help personalize the experience for the athlete. If the same program is assigned regularly, an athlete’s workouts scales as the athlete’s strength and ability scales. This also helps when assigning workouts to groups of people; the workout is tailored to their abilities, while keeping in line the group’s goals.

With an athlete management system there is less paperwork to process. There is no need for endless excel documents. This allows coaches to focus on the important parts of human performance improvement. (Gyms, clubs, and personal trainers specifically can Monetize Online Training Services with a system like this.)

Improve Communication

Good relationships are built on good communication. CoachMePlus offers in-app messaging to groups or to individuals. File sharing between coaches and athletes is very simple too. Store photos, videos, and other important content with the Athlete and Coach Library, the perfect repository for teams needing file sharing to be embedded and streamlined. With all this data flowing back and forth, you don’t need to worry about privacy challenges. CoachMePlus allows coaches to manage permissions for their organization and athletes so they can access a personalized experience on any mobile device.

Track

The need to import any human performance data set is a burden that every team needs to solve, and we designed a universal importer for teams of all sizes. Coaches can quickly upload different types of training or fitness related datasets with ease, which means they’ll have less time on the sideline recovering from training injuries so they can focus more heavily on coaching their athletes. 

Analyze

Engage athletes with live dashboards showing real-time performance information. Coaches can view real-time performance data and fitness levels, compliance, and training readiness. 

Training assessment – not just strength-based assessments, but also functional movement screening tools, sleep, mood, stress, and wellness questionnaires. With so much information out available to coaches, assessing how individuals have performed over time has never been easier.

Assess the quality of your training sessions through a variety of metrics, including heart rate, sets, reps, intensity, training load, and more. Track progression towards set goals to make sure your athletes are improving and ready for intense competition.

Who can benefit from having an Athlete Management System?

Gym Owners

AMS systems give people the ability to coach remotely or implement a hybrid in-person/online training program. CoachMePlus allows you to communicate with your members through their mobile devices and track their fitness progress. Both the members and gym owners benefit from the ease and transparency in workout programs. Trainers save time, increase retention rates, and provide accurate data about progress. Read More 

Strength and Conditioning Coaches

Human Performance Software helps coaches maximize the potential of the full team of athletes. Coaches can assign workouts based on position, or to each player individually. Professional sports teams like the Chicago Bulls, Nashville Predators and the Buffalo Bills have all benefited from Athlete Management Systems. Many high school and university coaches have used our software to manage individual and team growth. AMS systems provide coaching staff with transparency on progress and potential recovery or performance issues with players. Read more 

Physical Therapists

Therapists can help with many aspects of life including injury prevention, range of motion, rehabilitative care programming, recovery programming, ergonomics, and more. An athlete management system can be used for patients that may be experiencing pain or discomfort or rehabilitating after an injury. The body needs a balance between mobility and stability to avoid injury and physical therapists use athlete management systems to assess movements and improvement. 

Military

Monitoring warriors’ readiness is just as important during peacetime and training periods. Success relies on proper preparation, so it’s vital that commanders receive the information they need to make decisions about what is best suited for their own command. It’s crucial that evaluations be tailored to each unique command because different requirements can greatly affect performance metrics like strength or physical fitness levels when evaluating them against other units in a larger force structure. Evaluate your unit by taking into account all aspects such as skills learned throughout activities, injury rates from both combat-related injuries and noncombat related incidents, fatigue levels among troops who must balance both military and family roles simultaneously. Read More

Workplace Management / Industrial

The aging US workforce will require employers to implement programs that reduce the cost of musculoskeletal (MSK) injuries. Current options are inefficient and lack 1:1 coaching, which can lead to a high rate of failure in driving interventions at scale for MSK conditions such as low back pain, shoulder mobility or other overuse related injuries. More testing technology options have become available as wearables become more commonplace. Our platform provides a future-proof position as practitioners update hardwares and technology as it evolves.  As these factors change, it is crucial for providers who want to enter their practice field be up-to-date on recent innovations so they provide patients with improved care outcomes while also reducing costs associated with treating overuse and role-specific injury issues.

WHAT’S IN?

1. What language do (or don’t) you use?

2. What music do you play?

3. Do you speak life and belief to your people every day? Your clients, your staff, yourself?

4. Do you greet them at the door with a high five, their personal handshake, a hug when appropriate, a towel, fresh water, etc.?

5. Is your gym clean, safe, protected (insured enough, etc.)?

6. Do you offer things like gum or lifesavers, spare gloves for bar or bag work, (and Lysol when done for the next client?)

7. Do you have spare socks, a first aid kit, empty bags people can put sweaty clothes in if they get stuck and have to go somewhere instead of home?

10. Do you have a swag bag or a blessing bag? 

11. Do you attend athletes’ games, charity events, run events, go to gatherings, etc.? 

12. Does your staff? Encourage them and reward them if they do. You and your team are rockstars to the people you train, and your presence is a huge gift to the client and their families and you.

13. Do you follow up with thank you notes or connect with clients at home after they did something great in a session that day? (I used to call coaches and parents on behalf of my athletes that did exceptional things, especially based on effort; and wow did it go a LONG way…I asked permission first of course. That’s key.)

WHAT’S OUT?

3. People rolling into your gym with open wounds, coughing, and a fever?

4. People with bad attitudes?

5. People who gossip? Are you gossiping with your coaches about your clients or other coaches and peers?

6. People who judge others? Are you condemning, judging, shaming or controlling people or do you truly coach?

By the way, you set the stage for success (another method I love is called set, guide, and anchor which we’ll go over another time) with this type of stuff during your intake/assessment/trial.

WHAT’S ON YOUR WALLS?

WHAT’S OUTSIDE YOUR WALLS?

As you develop what’s IN and ON your walls, you shape what’s shared outside of them. What’s outside, really becomes the outcome of your process. And at the same time, it becomes the beginning of it as well. You begin to set the stage for success by sharing the real DNA of your brand with people who will relate to it. They’ll see a message, or an offer and it will resonate enough for them to inquire. Once they do, the touchpoint you shared outside, is anchored by everything you offer inside. And it becomes a circle of life if you will. This is your culture. And either YOU BUILD IT, OR THEY WILL. And you don’t really want to run they did (built it) business. I promise you. If you are right now, it’s your story and you can edit it fast.

HERE’S THE BOTTOM LINE

20 years I’ve been at it. 20 years and I still don’t really get “it” yet. I get it in my brain, meaning I’ve got an intellectual understanding, but not in my BEING. I haven’t made “it” an act of habit yet, or what we refer to as subconscious competence in coaching. The “it” I don’t get YET is the responsibility, opportunity and incredible influence I received when I made the decision to become a coach; the commitment to become a “fitness professional”. It is the call of the craft. And the question really becomes WHY am I doing this?

.