6.1 The reliability of monitoring

In a BBC radio programme, athletes debated to what extent individuals and squads ‘buy-in’ to the aim of monitoring; some even questioned the extent of their honesty when recording data.

Activity 6 Discussing athlete buy-in

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Listen to this clip of Sam Quek (hockey) in conversation with Eleanor Oldroyd (BBC presenter) and Steven Finn (cricket).

If you were asking a group of athletes to use a monitoring system such as the one discussed in the clip, what arguments would you put forward to persuade them?

[Note that ‘Pep’ in the clip is Pep Guardiola, Manager of Manchester City football team at the time of broadcast.]

Download this audio clip.Audio player: Audio 2

Show transcript|Hide transcript

Transcript: Audio 2

SAM QUEK

In hockey, before we were injured or ill, it was more often not that our team doctor, physio, or coach actually knew. And that was a case of every morning we had to fill in these monitoring forms online on an app, and it ranged from questions to, how many hours sleep did you get, what's your mental state like, how tired are you, the colour of your urine, first day of your menstrual cycle, all sorts. So when you have this amount of data and it's coming in every single morning and every afternoon, as soon as there's a blip in trend, that was when you are on the way to fatigue, on the way to injury.

So they may say to you, right, take your weights down in this session. Or actually, you know, you're full of flu, you're probably better off not taking part in this session. Or if it got to a competition or a game at Bisham, they'd pull you out of that game. And in that respect, GB Hockey were absolutely fabulous.

Now, Pep’s there in that interview saying that they spend a lot of money on nutrition and sport science, so it'd be quite interesting to see if they do have the same type of measurements in terms of performance, whether it's GPS, the amount of yards they're covering on a pitch, or how they are in their general well-being.

STEVEN FINN

How do you feel about filling in those forms though? Like I know I hate them, and I'm rarely-- if they're put in front of me, I will rarely-- they're just-- if you're so aware of how you're feeling, it doesn't feel natural if-- you know, so you're thinking about, how do I feel today, how-- it doesn't feel natural to me. It feels like you're forcing it, if you don't completely buy into it. And it's hard to get-- say there's 30 people on a professional cricket staff, it's hard to get 30 people to buy into doing that accurately. So I-- I wouldn't say--

ELEANOR OLDROYD

What, you think you would lie about it? You'd--

STEVEN FINN

Not lie, but sometimes--

ELEANOR OLDROYD

--overestimate how you're feeling.

STEVEN FINN

Yeah. Sometimes you wouldn't be completely honest, because again, you wouldn't want for fear of being-- for fear of being pulled out of things, because you never want to lose your place in the team or give someone else an opportunity to step ahead of you in the pecking order, which does happen quite regularly in cricket.

SAM QUEK

Yeah, for sure. It was the same with hockey. So probably the same in terms of amount of people on the programme. And you're filling it in day out, and of course, those questions always lingering above you when you're waking and up and you're feeling rough.

But then it goes to the point of actually my, you know, eight out of 10 is probably completely different to somebody else's eight out of 10. And for someone else, that might be a six or a five. I can never remember myself ranking myself lower than a six, because I would always want to push. I'd always want to train. And then in terms of if there was a session where the physio said, Sam, I don't think you could train, then there'd be that conversation between me going, actually, I think I'm fine. And it was only until you started hitting them really low figures that you would be pulled out of a session.

So you know what, there could have been people who thought, oh, I'm just going to lie. But I personally did it for my benefit, so actually before I even got to injury, before I even got to fatigue, I'd only miss one session rather than a whole week's worth of training.

End transcript: Audio 2

Download

Audio 2

Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).

To use this interactive functionality a free OU account is required. Sign in or register.

Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).

Discussion

Sam Quek makes the case for using the app on the grounds of achieving high personal standards and helping her avoid missing training unduly through injury. Being able to reduce the occurrence of injury is a huge bonus for any sport even if it is small reductions. The issues of trust and confidentiality would need to be raised and the personalised nature of the 1–10 scale ratings made clear. To make a coherent argument for such detailed monitoring it would be valuable for any coaches and medical professionals to explain how useful the information is and how, collectively, individuals and the whole team could benefit in terms of how they function, avoid injury and for their own well-being.

Ideally, an individual needs to put faith in the organisation acting in their genuine interests. An organisation hopes that monitoring will mean more athletes are available for selection, there are fewer athlete days off sick or injured, and there is less likelihood of athletes overtraining. However, as you saw at the start of the session, this is also increasingly recognised as an organisation’s duty of care.

The five insights you have studied in this session support your learning of the issues surrounding overtraining in terms of prevention, associated disorders, and how medical assessment and monitoring might be implemented.