WHAT IS LOAD MONITORING?
In our previous blog, we took you through Athlete Load and why it is an important measurement to have when looking into human performance. Now we want to continue this discussion as we discuss Load Monitoring, what it is and why you should look to STRIVE when managing and monitoring athlete’s load.
External load is defined as work completed by the athlete measured independently of their internal characteristics (Halson, 2014). Examples include distance covered, high-speed efforts or distances, magnitude or counts of acceleration, deceleration, changes, as well as training or sport specific measures such as number of reps, shots attempted, throws, or jumps. These measurements offer tangible data that can be used to see what an athlete has done.
Internal load represents the relative physiological and psychological stress imposed (Halson, 2014). This can be measured objectively via heart rate (using heart rate monitors like WHOOP, Apple Watch) or muscle activity (using STRIVE’s sEMG enabled compression shorts).
Analyzing the relationship between these two may reveal insights into an athlete’s fitness-fatigue relationship. A strong argument can be made that an athlete’s fitness-fatigue relationship is the foundation of physical performance.
At STRIVE, this is exactly what we aim to do. Using our STRIVE Performance System, we can visually see an athlete’s internal load in a way that wasn’t before possible. You will often see us refer to internal load as “muscle load”. Because, unlike other internal load metrics, STRIVE measures muscle activity.
WHY STRIVE?
Athletes are resilient. They push through discomfort and play through injury all of the time. It can be difficult for a coach or trainer to visually see their pain. Think back to when Tiger Woods fell to his knees in pain at The Barclays in 2013. From an external view the athlete looks fine, until they aren’t. They’ll tell you they’re ready to go because they want to play. We’ve all done it. How can we know if a player is truly ready?
STRIVE provides data and insights to allow athletes and trainers to compare their external and internal loads. Enabling them to make better decisions to prevent injury, and keep athletes performing at their peak.
Sports technology and athlete monitoring systems have continued to evolve and provide their clients with performance data. Whether STRIVE is a person’s first or tenth load monitoring data stream, STRIVE is able to provide unique value through our EMG enabled compression shorts capturing muscle activity.
Muscle activity is measured as amplitude and/or frequency. This provides a good estimate of muscular work completed by the athlete. For example: If an athlete squats 50% body weight, then 100% body weight, then 150% body weight, the muscle amplitude will increase as resistance increases.
However, at a more detailed scale, if the activity can be normalized (i.e. perform a maximum voluntary contraction and create a certain amount of force for as long as possible) the amplitude will increase and frequency will decrease as fatigue sets in during sub maximal work.
To see one way STRIVE is able to visualize these insights, check out a brief video of the Movement Evaluation feature for STRIVE PRO.
ABOUT STRIVE
STRIVE delivers the only platform proven to optimize muscle performance for elite athletes and teams. Through proprietary algorithms and sensors that seamlessly integrate into any compression clothing, STRIVE provides the most complete, accurate and actionable data for athletes to always compete at peak performance. Founded in 2016, STRIVE currently works with NCAA, NFL, EPL, and MLS teams, along with the US Military. For more information visit https://strive.tech/ or follow STRIVE on Twitter,LinkedIn, and Instagram.
