Cargando…

Athlete Monitoring in Rugby Union: Is Heterogeneity in Data Capture Holding Us Back?

In an effort to combat growing demands on players, athlete monitoring has become a central component of professional sport. Despite the introduction of new technologies for athlete monitoring, little is understood about the practices employed in professional rugby clubs. A questionnaire was circulat...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: West, Stephen W., Williams, Sean, Kemp, Simon P. T., Cross, Matthew J., Stokes, Keith A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6571870/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31035621
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/sports7050098
_version_ 1783427509637873664
author West, Stephen W.
Williams, Sean
Kemp, Simon P. T.
Cross, Matthew J.
Stokes, Keith A.
author_facet West, Stephen W.
Williams, Sean
Kemp, Simon P. T.
Cross, Matthew J.
Stokes, Keith A.
author_sort West, Stephen W.
collection PubMed
description In an effort to combat growing demands on players, athlete monitoring has become a central component of professional sport. Despite the introduction of new technologies for athlete monitoring, little is understood about the practices employed in professional rugby clubs. A questionnaire was circulated amongst conditioning staff across the 12 Premiership rugby clubs to capture the methods used, relative importance, perceived effectiveness and barriers to the use of multiple different athlete monitoring measurements. Previous injury, Global Positioning System (GPS) metrics, collision counts and age were deemed the most important risk factors for managing future injury risk. A wide range of GPS metrics are collected across clubs with high-speed running (12/12 clubs), distance in speed zones (12/12 clubs) and total distance (11/12 clubs) the most commonly used. Of the metrics collected, high-speed running was deemed the most important for managing future injury risk (5/12 clubs); however, there was considerable variation between clubs as to the exact definition of high-speed running, with both absolute and relative measures utilised. While the use of such monitoring tools is undertaken to improve athlete welfare by minimising injury risk, this study demonstrates the significant heterogeneity of systems and methods used by clubs for GPS capture. This study therefore questions whether more needs to be done to align practices within the sport to improve athlete welfare.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-6571870
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2019
publisher MDPI
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-65718702019-06-18 Athlete Monitoring in Rugby Union: Is Heterogeneity in Data Capture Holding Us Back? West, Stephen W. Williams, Sean Kemp, Simon P. T. Cross, Matthew J. Stokes, Keith A. Sports (Basel) Article In an effort to combat growing demands on players, athlete monitoring has become a central component of professional sport. Despite the introduction of new technologies for athlete monitoring, little is understood about the practices employed in professional rugby clubs. A questionnaire was circulated amongst conditioning staff across the 12 Premiership rugby clubs to capture the methods used, relative importance, perceived effectiveness and barriers to the use of multiple different athlete monitoring measurements. Previous injury, Global Positioning System (GPS) metrics, collision counts and age were deemed the most important risk factors for managing future injury risk. A wide range of GPS metrics are collected across clubs with high-speed running (12/12 clubs), distance in speed zones (12/12 clubs) and total distance (11/12 clubs) the most commonly used. Of the metrics collected, high-speed running was deemed the most important for managing future injury risk (5/12 clubs); however, there was considerable variation between clubs as to the exact definition of high-speed running, with both absolute and relative measures utilised. While the use of such monitoring tools is undertaken to improve athlete welfare by minimising injury risk, this study demonstrates the significant heterogeneity of systems and methods used by clubs for GPS capture. This study therefore questions whether more needs to be done to align practices within the sport to improve athlete welfare. MDPI 2019-04-27 /pmc/articles/PMC6571870/ /pubmed/31035621 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/sports7050098 Text en © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
West, Stephen W.
Williams, Sean
Kemp, Simon P. T.
Cross, Matthew J.
Stokes, Keith A.
Athlete Monitoring in Rugby Union: Is Heterogeneity in Data Capture Holding Us Back?
title Athlete Monitoring in Rugby Union: Is Heterogeneity in Data Capture Holding Us Back?
title_full Athlete Monitoring in Rugby Union: Is Heterogeneity in Data Capture Holding Us Back?
title_fullStr Athlete Monitoring in Rugby Union: Is Heterogeneity in Data Capture Holding Us Back?
title_full_unstemmed Athlete Monitoring in Rugby Union: Is Heterogeneity in Data Capture Holding Us Back?
title_short Athlete Monitoring in Rugby Union: Is Heterogeneity in Data Capture Holding Us Back?
title_sort athlete monitoring in rugby union: is heterogeneity in data capture holding us back?
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6571870/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31035621
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/sports7050098
work_keys_str_mv AT weststephenw athletemonitoringinrugbyunionisheterogeneityindatacaptureholdingusback
AT williamssean athletemonitoringinrugbyunionisheterogeneityindatacaptureholdingusback
AT kempsimonpt athletemonitoringinrugbyunionisheterogeneityindatacaptureholdingusback
AT crossmatthewj athletemonitoringinrugbyunionisheterogeneityindatacaptureholdingusback
AT stokeskeitha athletemonitoringinrugbyunionisheterogeneityindatacaptureholdingusback