[4-minute read]

This week we rolled out our much-anticipated well-being monitoring feature. Allowing you to monitor your client’s and athlete’s perceived well-being through a daily questionnaire. Here’s a little bit more on what the feature can do…

What is well-being monitoring?

Advances in sports technology have resulted in the development of cutting-edge athlete monitoring tools (e.g. online platforms) to provide coaches with subjective information detailing the internal load (i.e. rate of perceived exertion and wellness markers) of an athlete’s training in response to the external load.

RYPT’s well-being monitoring feature allows you to track your client’s and athlete’s perceived well-being so that you can see how each individual is reacting to their training program and other stressors in their lives. Giving you the insights into their readiness to perform so that you optimize each individual’s training program and manage their training load and ensure they are in peak condition both physically and mentally.

How does well-being monitoring work?

For your clients and athletes

Your clients and athletes are asked to complete a daily, 10-second questionnaire in the RYPT app which asks them to rate their Sleep, Sleep Duration, Mood, Energy Levels, Stress, and Muscle Soreness on a scale of 1 to 5, or 0-12+ hours for sleep duration.

They are then presented with a dashboard displaying their Readiness score for the day calculated from their responses, compared with their 7-day average Readiness. Along with tips on how to improve anything they have scored a 3 or below.

From the dashboard, they also have access to a more detailed report comparing their current day, 7-day average, and 28-day average responses for each question. The traffic light designs gives them a quick indication of their progress and immediately identifies areas that need attention.

For you as a coach

There are two places coaches can track their client’s and athlete’s responses:

Firstly, through the new Lifestyle dashboard on their user profile. Here you can see their cumulative readiness score which is calculated from their individual responses. Along with the number of “Red Zones” (questions they have answered 1 or 2, or 5 or below for sleep duration) highlighted. Coaches have the ability to toggle between the current day, or 7-day and 30-day averages.

You can also view an overview of their current day’s responses, as well as their 7-day, and 30-day averages for each question. The traffic light designs giving you a quick indication of their status and immediately identifying areas that need attention.

Secondly, in the Lifestyle dashboard in the Performance Analysis section. Here coaches can see a table with all of your client’s and athlete’s well-being data for the current day with traffic light colour coding so that you can quickly identify any individuals that need attention.

Coaches can also graph their client’s and athlete’s data for each of their responses to see their progress over a specific time period, as well as selecting training groups to see group averages.

What are the benefits?

Multiple studies indicate that levels of perceived well-being reflect an individual’s response to their training program and other stressors in their lives. For this reason and more, it can have huge benefits for the individuals who monitor it, and their coaches, such as:

For you as a coach

1. It helps you educate and empower / Monitoring their well-being will help your clients / athletes become more self-aware and recognise how their body reacts to the physical and psychological stressors in their lives. This increased self-awareness will teach them how to deal with these stressors and help them become more autonomous when it comes to their own personal recovery.
2. It opens up new lines of communication / Well-being monitoring is a great way to open up a communication channel with your clients / athletes that previously wasn’t there. This allows you to see how they’re reacting to your training program along with other stressors in their lives, of which you would otherwise have been unaware.
3. It provides you with actionable training insights / Insights into how each individual is reacting to your program can be used to personalize their program and manage their training load on any given day to achieve optimal results.
4. It provides you with actionable lifestyle insights / Insights into other areas of your clients / athletes life that may be affecting their recovery and performance can be invaluable. They can highlight areas that need attention in order to give them the edge.
5. It helps you prevent over-training / Well-being monitoring can identify over-training early so that you have the time to react before your clients / athletes suffer burnout, illness, or worse, injury. This will minimize missed training sessions and downtime allowing you to make sure your clients / athletes are always in peak condition.
6. It helps you improve your client’s / athlete’s performance and get better results / All of the above combined will go towards ensuring your clients /athletes are at their peak both physically and mentally. Allowing them to train and perform at optimum levels, and reach those all-important goals.

Read more about the benefits of monitoring your client’s and athlete’s well-being here.

For your clients / athletes

1. It teaches them about the art of recovery / Everyone reacts differently to physical and psychological stressors and therefore our perceived well-being can vary greatly. By monitoring their Lifestyle / Well-being, your clients / athletes will learn a great deal about how your own body responds to these stressors, and also about how to optimize their recovery to deal with these responses effectively.
2. It increases their self-awareness and autonomy / Increased self-awareness and understanding of their body will help your clients / athletes become more autonomous in dealing with their own recovery.
3. It improves the communication between you / Keeping informed about how your clients / athletes are reacting to their training program, how they’re recovering, and how other factors in their lives are affecting them will help you individualize their program, optimize their training load on any given day, and identify other areas of their lifestyle that may need attention in order to give them the edge.
4. It prevents over-training / Lifestyle / Well-being monitoring can identify over-training early so that you can react to prevent burnout, illness, and injury. This will minimize missed training sessions and downtime allowing them to maintain their peak condition.
5. It improves their performance and gets better results / All of the above will lead to your clients / athletes being in peak condition both physically and mentally. Allowing them to train and perform at optimum levels, and reach their all-important goals.

Share this blog post about the benefits of well-being monitoring with your clients and athletes to increase buy-in.