AMS by Catapult wellness measures helping to track athlete wellbeing
AMS by Catapult allows you to consistently track well-being to flag athlete condition ahead of training.
Monitoring wellness metrics allows you to understand the physical and mental state of each athlete, relative to changes in their workload. When monitored consistently, you will have the data required to enhance your team’s training and performance.
AMS by Catapult has introduced two optional questions that can accompany a team’s selected wellness metrics: “Are you injured?” and “Do you feel unwell?”
Designed to inform staff of the condition of a player as early as possible, if an athlete selects ‘Yes’ in response to either question, they will be prompted to add further detail. Athletes who have an injury or illness concern are immediately flagged on the dashboards of nominated staff members, allowing them to create a remedial plan or get in touch with the player using in-app messaging.
South African Super Rugby team, DHL Stormers, maintain an efficient and disciplined daily screening process using AMS by Catapult, and rapidly incorporated the new questions as part of their daily monitoring.
Senior Physio, Wayne Hector, relies on knowing what’s going on with the players before they arrive for training.
“With the AMS system it allows players to manage a self-screening process in the morning, which means that I don’t have to physically be in touch with each player before their day starts. The system flags players based on their musculoskeletal results in the morning and that just allows us to be a lot more efficient at the start of the day before the players hit the park.”
Head Strength and Conditioning Trainer, Stephan Du Toit, has ensured that the team’s daily wellness and screening is an initiative backed by staff as well as players.
“We as players and staff have seen the major benefits of being able to monitor the guys on a daily basis to ensure we get the best out of the athletes. We really appreciate the input that we get from the data and we love seeing the results on an ongoing basis.”
The feedback from players like Stormers lock Chris Van Zyl show that the players are on-board with the holistic view the team takes in monitoring objective and subjective data.
“A combination of putting in our daily wellness as well as our RPEs after every training session, our S&C coach gets an understanding of where we are and how we’re feeling,” Van Zyl said.
“And often based on that if there’s an issue of undertraining or overtraining, he will adjust our sessions accordingly, as well as if we’re not feeling up to it and we’ve got a bit of soreness or stiffness, he may adjust the session accordingly to ensure he gets the best out of us every day.”
Compliance and the level of contact time staff have with players in pre-season varies from team to team. One accountability mechanism AMS by Catapult offers is the ability to send wellness reminders to players via push notification to their mobile device.
Schedule to run automatically, or trigger anytime; you have the ability to remind your entire team, selected groups, or individuals. Each team controls how and when an athlete is prompted to complete their wellness, and a reminder will never be sent to a player who has already submitted that day.
Why schedule reminders?
- Athletes flag concerns at the earliest opportunity so you can be more proactive;
- Compliance is reinforced as athletes who have already completed wellness will not be reminded, and;
- Time of day and frequency of capture for wellbeing data is consistent across the team.