TY - JOUR T1 - The athlete monitoring cycle: a practical guide to interpreting and applying training monitoring data JF - British Journal of Sports Medicine JO - Br J Sports Med SP - 1451 LP - 1452 DO - 10.1136/bjsports-2016-097298 VL - 51 IS - 20 AU - Tim J Gabbett AU - George P Nassis AU - Eric Oetter AU - Johan Pretorius AU - Nick Johnston AU - Daniel Medina AU - Gil Rodas AU - Tom Myslinski AU - Dan Howells AU - Adam Beard AU - Allan Ryan Y1 - 2017/10/01 UR - http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/51/20/1451.abstract N2 - Given the relationships among athlete workloads, injury1 and performance,2 athlete monitoring has become critical in the high-performance sporting environment. Sports medicine and science staff have a suite of monitoring tools available to track how much ‘work’ an athlete has performed, the response to that ‘work’ and whether the athlete is in a relative state of fitness or fatigue. The volume of literature, coupled with clever marketing around the ‘best approaches’ to optimising athlete performance, has resulted in practitioners having more choices than ever before. Furthermore, the range of different practices used in sport and the lack of agreement between parties emphasise the importance of having a clear rationale for athlete monitoring. The aim of this paper is to provide a practical guide to strategic planning, analysing, interpreting and applying athlete monitoring data in the sporting environment irrespective of data management software.When deciding on the athlete monitoring tools to use with your athletes, the first question one should ask is “What do I want to achieve through athlete monitoring?” Quite commonly, the answer is to maximise the positive effects (eg, fitness, readiness and performance) and minimise the negative effects (eg, excessive fatigue, injury and illness) of training. Once practitioners know the reasons for athlete monitoring, appropriate tools can be chosen in order to answer the athlete monitoring question.For example, if practitioners wish to maximise ‘fitness’ and minimise ‘fatigue’, then appropriate monitoring tools to measure these outcomes are necessary. Measurement of fitness improvements for a Premier League football player (eg, a Yo-Yo test) … ER -