Introducing Load Planning Used for Micro Planning

Load management plays a crucial role in modern football. It refers to the careful monitoring and adjustment of players' physical load to prevent injury, optimize performance, and ensure the long-term health of athletes.

Today's football is characterized by a packed fixture list that includes both national and international competitions, cup matches, and friendlies. This intense workload can lead to fatigue, muscle injuries, and overuse, which negatively affect player performance. Load management allows coaches and medical staff to consider the individual needs of each player and create personalized training plans as part of the micro planning.

The load control is based on extensive data analysis, such as tracking data, heart rate monitoring, and playing time statistics. This data helps to identify the critical phases of high load during which players are at increased risk of injury. The targeted use of rest periods, intensive training, and recovery minimizes the risk of injury.

Another aspect of load management is taking into account the individual fitness and injury history of each player. Players with a history of injury may require longer rest periods and more emphasis on the rehabilitation process. By tailoring the load to each player's needs, teams can ensure that their best players stay in top shape, increasing the chances of success. This is accompanied by the consideration of the individual feedback of the players, who self-assess their well-being via the questionnaires.

In summary, load management in football is a strategic approach to training and loading players. It allows better control over athletes' performance and health, leading to better sporting results and longer careers. By training and protecting players appropriately, load management can make a significant contribution to the success of a football team.

In SAP Sports One, you can carry out load planning for your players. This lesson is about laying the foundations for this. To illustrate load planning in SAP Sports One, we will define the following KPIs that can be used for load planning:

• Total Distance
• Accelerations
• Decelerations
• Sprint Distance up to 25km/h
• Tempo Distance up to 19km/h
• High Metabolic Load Distance (HMLD)

Of course, you can also define individual KPIs for the load planning in your club.

The training type for example MD+1 is often used to differentiate the load management of the players. In connection to this, there are different reference target values, depending on the training type. For example, different target values for parameters are defined for MD+1 and MD+3. This is done to reflect the recovery process after the match. For this reason, it is important to distinguish between these training types. This is done by creating an individual reference training for each training type defined in your SAP Sports One system. This reference training serves as a reference point and documents the optimal load management. For example, the following reference target values can be defined for a MD+1 training session for each player.

In order to document the reference values, we create a reference training for the different training types. To upload the reference target values, we use a manual tracking configuration.

In the first step, make sure that you have created a tracking configuration for the upload of the reference values. In our example, the tracking configuration could look like this.

After the tracking configuration has been created, we can start to create a reference training that will be used for load management from now on. Do not forget to select the correct training type. In the calendar, select the training created and choose Upload Performance Data. Then you can select your tracking configuration and the corresponding reference data source from your device.

As soon as you have uploaded the reference target data, you have documented the reference values for this training type in the SAP Sports One system. You can now also do this for the other training types in order to document the reference target values for each training session of each week day.

After you have created all reference trainings, you can upload your performance data to SAP Sports One. For example, you can choose the manual tracking configuration or automated way with provider mapping to upload the performance data.

Now that the foundations for load management in SAP Sports One have been laid, the next step is to create an analysis for load management. This is explained in the next lesson.

The load of the players can be compared in many different ways. Because we created a reference training for a certain type of training, we can get some useful analysis by comparing the reference values with the actual values of the player. In this way, we are able to see how close a player performance is to these reference values and whether an acceptable load is achieved. On the other hand, whether the players are overloaded or underloaded can be directly deduced.

The following analysis serves as an example for illustrative purposes. Here, the reference values of each player for the defined tracking parameter are shown in orange. By selecting the created reference training, you can flexibly specify which reference value (for example, MD+1) should be used for further analysis. In addition, the daily performance values of the last training session are displayed in blue. This gives you the opportunity to compare how the reference value and the daily value relate to each other. The percentage ratio of target and actual values are shown in red in the last column.

As you can see from this example, there is a lot of discrepancy between the reference target value for MD+1 and the actual performance data of the players. Many values are above, and others below, the set target value. This analysis offers clues to possible underloads and, more importantly, overloads of the players.

In addition to the pure consideration of a player's performance data, the subjective well-being and individual assessment of the player's performance is also crucial for load management. In most cases, a player can better decide how they assess their load and whether the pure data correctly reflects their actual well-being. To determine this individual load, a player's questionnaire results can be used.

In the previous unit, it was explained how the questionnaires in SAP Sports One can be used to get feedback and responses of players as part of the macro planning. These questionnaires can also be used for micro planning. For the micro planning questionnaires, the questions are fundamentally different.

Instead of the questions being asked and analyzed over the entire macro planning period, the questions provide the possibility to give direct feedback after or before a training session. For this reason, these questionnaires can also be connected directly to a training session and sent out to the players at a specific time.

During micro planning, the following questions can be used to get after-training feedback from the players:

• How did you perceive your training performance?
• How intense did you feel the last session?
• Do you have any muscular complaints after the training?
• Do you want to see the doctor?

Depending on the outcome of the questionnaires, you can decide to manage the load of each player for the coming days. This creates a flexibility that takes into account the assessment of the individual player. In addition, the results also serve as a safety measure to detect and prevent injuries that could result from overloading at an early stage.

This example of analysis based on the players' responses is provided for illustrative purposes.

As depicted in this example, there is a particular high load for the player Bauer. This would be a starting point to flexibly adjust and regulate the load of this player. The last training session was very intense for the player and they came out of it with muscular problems. In addition, they reported back that they would like to see a doctor. This analysis is an important point to prevent overloads and injuries for the player.