USING PERFORMANCE

TECHNOLOGY TO
ANSWER KEY COACHING
QUESTIONS
E-BOOK

USING PERFORMANCE TECHNOLOGY TO ANSWER KEY COACHING QUESTIONS 1

CONTENTS 05 07
HOW DO I INCREASE THE H O W C A N I P R E PA R E M Y P L AY E R S ?
CHANCES OF SUCCESSFUL
PERFORMANCE OUTCOMES? If you’re not measuring the loads your players
are being exposed to, then it’s virtually
Athlete monitoring technologies aren’t able to impossible to protect them from injury.
improve results on their own, but they can make
an important contribution towards optimising
the performance of your team.

08 10
H O W C A N M Y P L AY E R S HOW CAN I IMPROVE
REACH THEIR POTENTIAL? M Y C O M M U N I C AT I O N ?

Talent development has historically been Without strong communication skills, it

viewed as more art than science, but can be extremely difficult to convey key
monitoring technologies a now providing a messages and ensure that your athletes
more objective means to measure athlete are responding positively.
response and adaptation.

USING PERFORMANCE TECHNOLOGY TO ANSWER KEY COACHING QUESTIONS 2

INTRODUCTION
Coaching is hard. From the stress of in-
game decision making, to constant strategic
planning and the nuances of people
management, to be a coach is to take on a
multitude of different roles and tasks.
There isn’t a coach on the planet able to fulfil
every demand placed on their time without
support. Faced with numerous different
challenges, what matters is surrounding yourself
with the people and tools that make it faster
and easier to make good decisions. As the great
San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich once
said, “It’s not about any one person. You’ve got
to get over yourself and realise that it takes a
group to get this thing done.”
At Catapult, everything we do is designed
to improve the performance of athletes and
teams. That improvement can only be realised
by equipping coaches, analysts and sport
USING PERFORMANCE TECHNOLOGY TO ANSWER KEY COACHING QUESTIONS
scientists with information that can help to some light on the ways the technology can help
solve fundamental performance questions. you find quick and effective answers to your
most pressing questions. •
As a coach, the demands on your time are
huge, meaning that you regularly have to rely
on colleagues to provide you with relevant and
insightful information. Ultimately, you just
want your questions answered. The specific
questions coaches ask may change from
week to week, but generally they fall into four Sports science is the
biggest and most
categories (next page).
important change
Supporting performance decisions with well
calibrated and presented information is at
the centre of Catapult’s mission, through
effective use of tracking, video and athlete in my lifetime.
management technologies.
- Sir Alex Ferguson
Whether you’re a coach who is familiar with
athlete monitoring or just taking your first
steps in that area, this e-book should shed
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FOUR CATEGORIES

FOUR KEY CATEGORIES

WINNING FITNESS TALENT COMMUNICATION

Being more successful Improving player Developing players Conveying clear

on the pitch fitness and reducing to reach their full performance
injury risk potential messages

USING PERFORMANCE TECHNOLOGY TO ANSWER KEY COACHING QUESTIONS 4

WINNING
HOW DO I INCREASE THE CHANCES OF
SUCCESSFUL PERFORMANCE OUTCOMES?
Despite being a binary concept, ‘winning’ is
the result of a complicated series of factors
including talent, preparation and luck. Of
course, it’s impossible to guarantee success,
but there are steps coaches can take to make
winning more likely.
“Winning is about creating small wins along
the way to build a culture that buys into what
you want to build,” says Tony Strudwick,
Head of Performance at the Football
Association of Wales. “It’s a matter of the
right person with the right message at the
right time every time.”
Effective use of performance technologies
ensures that coaches have relevant and reliable
information available to inform the decision
making process. Having good information
available at hand increases the probability
USING PERFORMANCE TECHNOLOGY TO ANSWER KEY COACHING QUESTIONS
that associated decisions will lead to
successful outcomes.
Put simply, any data that you can bring to the
decision coaching process will enhance the
objectivity and effectiveness of your decisions. By
investing in athlete monitoring technologies, you
can access information that can inform crucial
training, selection and recruitment decisions.
For example, performance data can help you
to build a picture of the physical demands of
particular leagues and competitions. This can
then inform the creation of training plans that
prepare your players for the specific challenges
that they face on matchday. Once you are
confident in your players’ ability to meet key
fitness demands, you can start to work on
more tactical and skill-based elements. This will
ensure that your team is geared to compete
both physically and technically, giving it a better
chance of succeeding relative to performance
expectations.
Similarly, receiving data from players’ training
and match performances can give you a deeper
understanding of how the team is carrying out
tactical instructions. If you are implementing
a particular style of play, this type of technical
and tactical analysis can be key to knowing
which players are best suited to your system.
By bringing objective information to your
selection decisions, it is possible to maximise
the effectiveness of your planning and ensure
that you are picking a team equipped to meet
the demands of your system or to counter a
particular opponent.
Techniques such as video analysis can be key
to this process. Traditionally, decisions and
feedback have been informed by a coach’s
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WINNING

subjective view of performance, but that can be

influenced by a huge number of biases. Given
that most coaches have been shown to recall
just 59.2% of critical events during games (Laird
and Walters, 2008), it’s key that additional
systems are used to improve the objectivity of
the planning and review processes.

As a coach, you want to do everything in your

power to give your team the best chance of
success on a matchday. If you can pair objective
information with a clear strategy, then you’ll
be giving your players a better chance of
maximising their performance on the field. •

USING PERFORMANCE TECHNOLOGY TO ANSWER KEY COACHING QUESTIONS 6

FITNESS
HOW CAN I PREPARE MY PLAYERS?
Without a healthy group of players at your
disposal, it’s incredibly difficult to maintain
consistency and achieve the performance
goals you’ve set for your team.
As the saying goes, “if it’s not measurable,
it’s not manageable.” In the context of player
fitness, if you’re not measuring the loads
your players are being exposed to in training
and games, then it’s virtually impossible to
prepare them for performance and protect
them from injury.
The beauty of many athlete monitoring systems
is that you don’t necessarily need a high level of
sports science expertise to take steps to reduce
injury risk. At a very basic level, objectively
measuring the fitness of your players can be
as simple as establishing physical benchmarks
for each individual through standardised tests
or drills. Those figures can then be monitored
USING PERFORMANCE TECHNOLOGY TO ANSWER KEY COACHING QUESTIONS
relative to key metrics throughout the season. No matter how advanced or limited your
club’s sports science set up is, as a coach you
Once benchmarks have been created,
can use athlete monitoring technologies to
processes can be created that enable coaches
get a deeper insight into the fitness of your
and sports scientists to start identifying
players. By ensuring that your organisation
potentially concerning trends in the data.
is taking the appropriate steps to manage
When ‘red flags’ that are associated with
the health of your athletes, you will positively
increased risk of injury are spotted, you and
impact availability, reduce avoidable soft
your staff can make appropriate interventions
tissue injuries, and ultimately give your team a
to reduce a player’s risk of injury (e.g. removing
greater chance of success. •
them from a certain drill).
Clearly, teams with significant sports science
departments and multiple departments can
conduct this sort of work at a greater level of
detail, through athlete management systems
like Catapult AMS. However, even teams
with more limited resources can implement
simple strategies that can quickly answer your
questions around fitness and improve rates of
player availability.
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TALENT

HOW CAN I HELP MY PLAYERS TO REACH

THEIR POTENTIAL?
One of the most rewarding aspects of the season (a process that can also serve the
coaching is being able to support the injury risk reduction strategies mentioned in
development of your athletes and help them the previous chapter).
to reach their potential. Historically this
These measurements can be combined with
process has been viewed as more art than
simple technical data (e.g. pass completion
science, but monitoring technologies are now
rates, duels won, shot efficiency etc.) to build a
providing a more objective means to measure
more complete picture of an athlete’s technical
athlete response and adaptation over time.
proficiency and physical condition.
How does this work in practice? As with most
Once this data has been collected in the first
things, it starts with a simple question; how do
instance, you can begin to longitudinally monitor
I know my players are improving?
the metrics that you deem to be the most
Given that improvement is a relative important in the context of your team’s specific
concept, it can only be gauged from an initial goals. This can be as simple or as complex
starting point. For the purposes of sporting process as you want, from a sports science-led
performance, this usually takes the form of data collection project to a basic spreadsheet.
recording an athlete’s physical capacity and
Whatever method is best for your
using that as a reference point throughout

USING PERFORMANCE TECHNOLOGY TO ANSWER KEY COACHING QUESTIONS 8

TALENT

organisation, the important thing is simply to developmental trajectory of your players.

record relevant measurements on a regular
basis. By doing this, you can assess key trends
in the data over time and purposefully reflect
on the effectiveness of your training plans and
the response of your athletes to those plans.
Bringing data to the heart of the coaching
process in a simple and accessible way,
analysis of this kind empowers you to quickly
find concrete answers to some of your most
important performance questions. •

This framework can be adapted to work

across different squads and age groups.
Using the same methods you use with your
first team, you can quantify the relative
performance levels of your academy players.
By supplementing expert opinion with objective
data, you can establish which of your young
players might be technically and physically
ready to step up and make a positive impact in
the first team.

By following this type of process it becomes

easier to understand and monitor the

USING PERFORMANCE TECHNOLOGY TO ANSWER KEY COACHING QUESTIONS 9

COMMUNICATION
HOW CAN I IMPROVE MY COMMUNICATION?
As a coach, you are constantly required to
clearly communicate strategies, expectations
and instructions to your athletes. Without
strong communication skills, it is difficult to
convey those messages effectively and ensure
that your athletes are responding positively.
When it comes to communicating data-
led insights, it’s vital that you use all the
tools at your disposal to engage your
athletes and ensure that they fully digest
the information you present them with. It’s
here that athlete monitoring technologies
can serve to support the way you deliver key
performance messages.
Sometimes improving performance
communication can be as simple as
introducing more transparency into your
processes. For example, if your organisation
is using monitoring technology but you’re not
USING PERFORMANCE TECHNOLOGY TO ANSWER KEY COACHING QUESTIONS
explaining the ‘why’ to your athletes, then they
are less likely to engage with the information
that you are collecting and acting upon.
Conversely, athletes who are brought into the
process and informed of the core objectives
will be more inclined to pay attention to the
resulting data and participate in a healthy
feedback process.
If you have a group of athletes who are
accustomed to the use of data, then the
objective information offered by analytical
technologies can be a valuable means of
informing and rationalising your strategy.
Making difficult decisions is an unavoidable
part of coaching, so being honest with
athletes and making them aware of your
rationale is an important aspect of people
management and squad harmony. If you are
able to justify selection and performance
decisions with supporting data, then you
will be able to communicate in a way that
removes negative emotion and grounds your
choices in objectivity.
The ability to bring data into your coaching
communications can also have benefits
beyond the coach-athlete relationship. For
larger organisations it can be all too easy
to fall into the habit of storing data in silos,
thereby limiting its effectiveness. However,
by implementing robust processes and
technologies such as athlete management
systems, it is possible to centralise key
information and improve the efficiency with
which it is communicated.
By using technology as both a practical and
educational support, you can underpin your
communication with objectivity and empower
your athletes with clear, powerful and
actionable insights. •
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