software, Sport app, Sports Science

Interesting free apps

Here is a quick article to share with you some recent apps I have been using/trying. The first one is an app developed by Philips called Vital signs which works on an Ipad 2.

The Vital Signs App by Philips, allows for heart rate and breathing rate analysis. Simply place an iPad 2 on a table in a well lit room , place your face inside the box on screen and the app will determine your heart rate and breathing rate.

Heart rate is actually calculated by comparing the tiny changes in colour of your face which occurs as a result of changes in blood flow. The measurement of breathing rates occur via simply detecting and counting the rise and fall of the users’ chest.

 

The accuracy seems to be pretty good in well lit areas and in normal breathing conditions. I will do more testing in the next few weeks and present some results here.

 

The other very interesting app is again free and has been developed by Dr. Grant Abt called Training load. Training load allows anyone to record and track the ‘dose’ of exercise for a single person with two common methods used by sport and exercise scientists – Session-RPE and the Training Impulse (TRIMP). Both methods integrate training intensity and training duration into a single number (arbitrary unit) representing the overall dose of training. The app allows the storage and sharing of the training data and it is completely free. Training load is available on the apple store and works on iphone and ipod touch.

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Tapping on ‘View Graph’ will display the data as both individual sessions (labelled DAILY) and as weekly totals (labelled WEEKLY). The weekly graph for TRIMP also displays the percentage change from the previous week. The weekly graph for Session-RPE also displays the monotony, percentage change from the previous week, and strain. Monotony is a value that describes the variation in the training load, with higher values representing less variation.

Strain is calculated as load x monotony and displayed on the weekly graph as a black circle connected with lines. Strain represents the combined value of load and monotony, so if the load is high and there is little variation in that load then the strain will be high.

The monotony values are colour-coded green (good), orange (caution), or red (danger). As for monotony, the percentage change in weekly loads are colour-coded to show the magnitude of change – green (optimal), orange (high), and red (too high).

It works really well and it is a simple free tool to track the training dose and the perception of loading of your athletes wherever they are.

online journal, sports, Sports Science

End of the year reflections and thank you!

We are fast approaching the end of 2011 and another year of blogging is also gone by.

This blog started for fun, mainly to provide freely accessible information for coaches and sports scientists around the World in a simple format and possibly using multimedia. I try to keep it going also because I realised it is a good way to reach students and young practitioners as well as being a good platform for debate on many topics. This year I also joined Twitter and started to link social media with the blog in order to offer more and also be able to debate topical issues in sports and exercise sciences.

This year I also used the blog to write a letter in response to an ill-informed newspaper article and received some amazing feedback. Thank you not only for reading the letter but also for supporting my view that that piece of work was really a lot of non-sense.

The blog has grown an incredible following very fast since starting it in 2009. This means that whatever I write is of interest and hopefully stimulates more ideas in other parts of the World. This is exactly what I wanted from the blog. Develop a platform rather than a forum for discussions. The Internet is full of places to discuss and debate, I prefer this place to be somewhere to read something interesting and use it as a starting point, a stimulus to read further and find out more.

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This year the blog received 27,668 visits from 145 countries. A lot more visits and countries than last year. I can only say thank you to you all. I am humbled by such interest in what I have to say.

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I hope to have the time to keep writing something useful and interesting in 2012. I have few ideas and hope time will be on my side. Next year will be an interesting one professionally, with the Olympic Games in London. I have learnt so much in the last few years having to work towards a “home” Olympic game and will share some ideas and concepts on these pages when possible.

I wish you all a productive and exciting 2012 and thank you again for coming back to visit this blog so often.

performance, Sports Science

Will it make the boat go faster?

This is not only a great question, it is also the title of a brilliant book from Ben Hunt-Davis and Harriet Beveridge.

 

image Ben is a good friend and colleague at the British Olympic Association. We work in the same department with different roles but with the same aim: helping our athletes and coaches in their quest for Olympic success. Ben is an Olympic Gold Medallist from Sydney Olympics. In this book he writes about his story and how his team was able to win Gold. Most of all, describes the techniques used by him and his crew in preparation for the Olympics. It is a true description of the difficulties of working as a team to reach a goal and accomplish something great.

Ben’s story is brilliant because it shows how a pretty normal guy willing to put a lot of hard work into something can accomplish amazing things in pretty much everything. The Book is divided in 12 chapters. In each chapter there is the story and then a summary with some practical applications of the techniques discussed in the real life example of the winning men’s eight rowing team.

It is easy to read and easy to follow as well as packed with some useful and easy concepts to be applied in every activity. The main motto is the one making the title of this book. In fact, in Ben’s terms everything we do should always be questioned to make sure it impacts on the most important outcomes. In his example, everything was about making the boat go faster. Every activity was questioned and only the ones able to help making the boat go faster was implemented.

Working in high performance sport I can say that we are swamped with possibilities and solutions for our athletes. However we should always look at the impact of every activity (training method, technology, nutritional intervention, logistics etc.) on the end result. Most of all at the likelihood of a positive impact versus the effort needed to implement it. So, since working with Ben, I have adopted and use a lot his usual question in everything I do: “will it make the boat go faster?”.

So if you want to know more, get a copy of this book, I am sure there will be some useful lessons to be learnt and a great story to read.