More than a Metric: How Training Load is Used in Elite Sport for Athlete Management

Training load monitoring is a core aspect of modern-day sport science practice. Collecting, cleaning, analysing, interpreting, and disseminating load data is usually undertaken with a view to improve player performance and/or manage injury risk. To target these outcomes, practitioners attempt to optimise load at different stages throughout the training process, like adjusting individual sessions, planning day-to-day, periodising the season, and managing athletes with a long-term view. With greater investment in training load monitoring comes greater expectations, as stakeholders count on practitioners to transform data into informed, meaningful decisions. In this editorial we highlight how training load monitoring has many potential applications and cannot be simply reduced to one metric and/or calculation. With experience across a variety of sporting backgrounds, this editorial details the challenges and contextual factors that must be considered when interpreting such data. It further demonstrates the need for those working with athletes to develop strong communication channels with all stakeholders in the decision-making process. Importantly, this editorial highlights the complexity associated with using training load for managing injury risk and explores the potential for framing training load with a performance and training progression mindset.

Athlete Management Information System in KONI Karawang District

The Indonesian National Sports Committee or KONI is an organization that functions as a coordinating all athletes whose duty is to foster and develop the athletes become achievers in sports activities both at the regional and national levels. Koni Karawang is one of the authorized organization in coordinating every sporting activity in Karawang district and also functions as a forum for athletes in Karawang district so that it can accommodate all talented athletes so that they can be fostered further. Quite a lot of athletes in the Karawang district requires the management of data collection of athletes to be better coordinated. So, we need a system that can facilitate the management of KONI athletes in Karawang district. In this case, an Information System was created which functions to process the data of athletes in Karawang district, so that it would be assisting in the data collection of the athletes. The information system created is in the form of a website-based application with implementation using a PHP programming language and MySQL database

An accounting review of athletes in ownership of basketball club assets

Sports are now growing as a business industry that can involve many parties interested in it. This study aims to determine the accounting treatment of athletes, recognized as club assets in the sport industry, particularly at Surabaya Fever Basketball Club. The unit of analysis is the management accountant and athlete management with both the primary and secondary data. The data were collected using interview, observation, and documentatition and analyzed by means of testing, categorizing, tabulating, and recombining the evidence. The use of this qualitative method approach is an answer that cannot be measured in numbers, but the indicator is the meaning of the context. The results show that Surabaya Fever Club recognizes the athlete as an asset and has fulfilled the asset classification. It is proven by the existence of economic benefits or services in the future. There is a useful life for the company originating from past transactions and is expressed in monetary units. In addition athletes are valued as intangible assets because they have economic benefits for the organization and are identified without physical form. Athletes meet the main characteristics, that is, can be further identified. However, there are no specific standards that state or discuss human resource assets.

It’s Just Not Cricket: A Case of Ethics, Integrity, and Organizational Culture Within a National Sport Governing Body

In early 2018, Cricket Australia, the national governing body for cricket in Australia, experienced a critical incident when men’s national test athletes were caught in a ball tampering scandal known as “Sandpaper-gate.” As the “custodians of the game,” integrity and culture are extremely important, and the incident was the catalyst for the organization to hire a new Integrity Manager. This case study concentrates on the story of Patrick Murphy, the new, fictitious hire at Cricket Australia tasked with helping to rebuild the organization’s ethical culture. After learning of Patrick’s past sport experiences, the narrative reveals additional non-fictitious elements that have emanated over the course of the past few years, which are affecting the organization’s present culture. After learning about the doping, human resource management, sex and diversity, and athlete management issues, Patrick is tasked with performing a culture audit and reporting back to his superiors. This case study offers a contemporary context in which to discuss ethics and culture in sport, notably from a large, non-North American sport organization.

Validity of the Online Athlete Management System to Assess Training Load

Purpose: To validate the quantification of training load (session rating of perceived exertion [s-RPE]) in an Australian Olympic squad (women’s water polo), assessed with the use of a modified RPE scale collected via a newly developed online system (athlete management system). Methods: Sixteen elite women water polo players (age = 26 [3] y, height = 1.78 [0.05] m, and body mass = 75.5 [7.1] kg) participated in the study. Thirty training sessions were monitored for a total of 303 individual sessions. Heart rate was recorded during training sessions using continuous heart-rate telemetry. Participants were asked to rate the intensity of the training sessions on the athlete management system RPE scale, using an online application within 30 min of completion of the sessions. Individual relationships between s-RPE and both Banister training impulse (TRIMP) and Edwards’ method were analyzed. Results: Individual correlations with s-RPE ranged between r = .51 and .79 (Banister TRIMP) and r = .54 and .83 (Edwards’ method). The percentages of moderate and large correlation were 81% and 19% between s-RPE method and Banister TRIMP, and 56% and 44% between s-RPE and Edwards’ method. Conclusions: The online athlete management system for assessing s-RPE was shown to be a valid indicator of internal training load and can be used in elite sport.