{"id":110,"date":"2010-08-18T00:57:51","date_gmt":"2010-08-18T00:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/optimumsportsperformance.com\/blog\/?p=110"},"modified":"2019-01-19T23:26:57","modified_gmt":"2019-01-19T23:26:57","slug":"stress-and-quantification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/optimumsportsperformance.com\/blog\/stress-and-quantification\/","title":{"rendered":"Stress and Quantification"},"content":{"rendered":"

In response to Monday\u2019s blog post,\u00a0Stress!!<\/a>, the following question was asked<\/p>\n

Getting into some of our conversation from yesterday, is there any way we can quantify this stuff without extreme ends? Have you used anything like the Profile of Mood States?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Regards,<\/strong><\/p>\n

Carson Boddicker<\/strong><\/p>\n

Carson, great question.\u00a0 Quantifying whether or not the athlete is under high amounts of stress and ready for intense\/high quality work that day can be done several ways.<\/p>\n

First, on my general intake form there is a question regarding the clients own subjective stress levels.\u00a0 This is something that I further enquire about when talking with the individual, as I want to try and determine where they are at before I start adding\u00a0more\u00a0<\/em>stress.\u00a0 I\u2019ll ask them about their sleep, their overall daily mood, and times when they feel the most stress.<\/p>\n

Having a stress profile as you suggested can be helpful.\u00a0 Having the individual\u00a0jot down and\/or rate how well they slept the night before, how they feel today, are they sore, how hard would they rate the last workout, etc, can provide you with valuable information to plan training on a specific day.\u00a0 Additionally, resting heart rate and blood pressure can be taken and compared to previous tests to determine if they are at or around their general norm.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t want to have the athletes fill out paper work every time, you can also just talk to them and observe them during the warm up.\u00a0 Being a good observer is an important aspect of being a good coach.\u00a0 Notice how the athlete(s) look when walking into the gym.\u00a0 Are they looking sluggish?\u00a0 Do they look down?\u00a0 What is their overall posture like (this can tell a lot about a persons general mood)<\/em>?\u00a0 From there, during the warm up, you may notice the athlete(s) moving in a slower or uncharacteristic manner.\u00a0 When I see things like this, I immediately start asking more questions.\u00a0 If I feel that the athlete is not prepared for intense\/high quality training that day, based on what I see and the feedback I am getting, then we go ahead and do a\u00a0back off day\u00a0<\/em>or we just do some soft tissue work and mobility exercises.\u00a0 I have also sent people home\u00a0on certain occasions when I felt that taking a full day of rest would be the best thing for them.\u00a0 Additionally, knowing when stressful periods of the year are coming up can help you plan training.\u00a0 For example, you work with several collegiate athletes.\u00a0 Midterms and finals\u00a0time would be a good time to turn down the training stress as the athletes are usually staying up late to study or write papers, and under high amounts of stress from taking tests all week.<\/p>\n

Finally, performance measures can be used if you have a base to measure them against.\u00a0 A vertical jump or a broad jump (following a good warm up of course) can help to determine if the athlete is ready for strength or power work on a given day.\u00a0 I believe in Fleck and Kraemer\u2019s\u00a0Optimizing Strength Training<\/em>, they recommend taking the average of three jumps.\u00a0 That number should be roughly 90% or greater than their normal vertical or broad jump if you are going to train power or strength that day.\u00a0 If it is below 90%, then the athlete is not prepared for high quality work that day and should take a back off day to allow for more recovery to\u00a0ensure they are\u00a0ready for\u00a0the next intense workout.<\/p>\n

Those are a few \u201clow-tech\u201d ways of evaluating the athlete, others may have additional ideas, so hopefully they leave the in the comments section.\u00a0 Of course you can also try and go more \u201chigh-tech\u201d with things like the Omega Wave (which I confess I don\u2019t know much about at this time)\u00a0<\/em>or even a Polar watch\/heart rate monitor\u00a0that can take your heart rate variability (HRV).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In response to Monday\u2019s blog post,\u00a0Stress!!, the following question was asked Getting into some of our conversation from yesterday, is there any way we can quantify this stuff without extreme ends? Have you used anything like the Profile of Mood States? Regards, Carson Boddicker Carson, great question.\u00a0 Quantifying whether or not the athlete is under […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-strength-and-conditioning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/optimumsportsperformance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/optimumsportsperformance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/optimumsportsperformance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/optimumsportsperformance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/optimumsportsperformance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/optimumsportsperformance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116,"href":"https:\/\/optimumsportsperformance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions\/116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/optimumsportsperformance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/optimumsportsperformance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/optimumsportsperformance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}