If you work in elite sport, you do not control the calendar; the calendar controls you. The job is to keep athletes available and dangerous when games matter most. That takes clear monitoring frameworks, deep understanding of KPIs, ruthless consistency of assessment, and adaptable programming. During our recent roundtable on load management, four practitioners compared notes on how they navigate that tension every day:
Every programming decision is made in response to surveillance: What is the demand, how is the athlete executing, experiencing, and surviving that demand, and what does it cost them to do so? The practitioner’s role is to facilitate the mechanical, metabolic, and psychological capacity and resiliency to consistently excel, while understanding the finite nature of those qualities and the cost-rate of competition. This is the essence of load management.
“We start with the demands of the game and work backwards to our systems,” said Todd Kubacki. “When we know the positional demands and typical exposure, we can plan daily, weekly, monthly, then vary it based on what last night actually brought.”
A shared language comes next. Define your KPIs so clearly that anyone on staff can spot when a player is on trend, off trend, or in danger of over-reaching. Internal load assessment using heart rate sensors is a valuable way to monitor athlete response to both acute and chronic stimulus. KPIs such as average heart rate or training impulse provide needed insight for short term programming adjustments, while metrics like resting heart rate (RHR), heart rate variability (HRV), and cumulative training impulse will help avoid chronic low level fatigue and overtraining. Subjective surveillance such as session RPE or questionnaires can also be valuable tools for assessing acute and chronic athlete response.
External load measures should align with sport, position and task. In field and court sports, Catapult’s PlayerLoad is a common, validated proxy for overall mechanical work; their explainer is a useful primer to standardize terminology with sport coaches and front office staff. While KPIs like distance and running velocity have been rightfully popularized, do not forget about more hidden but high-value KPIs such as jumps/collisions, changes in orientation, or accelerations. These can be great task and position specific markers that help guide how much game stimulus to include in your training.
Coaching move: Write down important KPI definitions in a one-page glossary and use them in every staff touchpoint. Consistency reduces friction later when you need to act fast.
“Do not try to absorb everything all the time,” noted Geoff Ebbs. “Define what matters, then make it actionable inside your training context.”
For Ty’s high-tempo basketball environment, three buckets carry their load management strategy:
When you need one fatigue-sensitive summary for jump quality, Modified Reactive Strength Index (mRSI) from a CMJ is popular because it tracks jump height relative to time on the ground.
Coaching move: pre-commit to how each KPI changes training. For example, if a CMJ mRSI drops below your in-season floor, do you adjust the training strategy, change the primary lift, or push to a recovery template?
Games stack up; your program must too. Brad Lawson put it plainly:
“We microdose in the weight room. Most sessions are fifteen to twenty minutes of actual work. One or two primary lifts, a simple accessory, stimulate without annihilating, and keep the trainable menu tight so the complex work can happen on the field.”
Microdosing can be a valuable scheduling solution during the chaos of the season. These short sessions allow performance teams to maintain consistent touch points with their athletes while working through high value, low fatigue protocols. It is critical to account for training residuals when building training sessions, understanding the outcome and recovery time of specific stimulus, and how they fit into the long-term plan.
Coaching move: build three in-season templates you can swap quickly:
As loads climb, nuance beats novelty. Brad again:
“Most players need most of the same things; the nuance is in constraints. Front squat versus box squat, tempo versus ballistic intent, partial range versus full range, these are the details that fit the data and the athlete.”
That is where force-plate-informed decisions help. If an athlete’s braking strategy erodes, you can bias eccentric capacity with tempo squats, kettlebell catches, or snap-downs; if impulse is flat and depth is chronically restricted, you can dose range and intent differently until strategy trends back toward baseline. For coaches building their force-plate playbook, Hawkin Dynamics’ strategy-focused content is a pragmatic bridge between analytics and sets x reps.
Coaching move: codify two or three constraint swaps for each core lift that map to the patterns you actually see in your monitoring. Put those into your programming tool so the change is one click, not a rewrite.
“Ask what is the rate-limiting factor for performance?” said Geoff. “Then keep the main thing the main thing. Do not create your own interference to progress by losing sight of the goal.”
Todd noted:
“Do not steal what makes them great. We keep lifting the strengths while nudging the weaknesses up over time.”
That is where a simple decision tree helps you operationalize judgment at scale. If seven-day internal load approaches a ceiling, drop a player’s exposure band for the next practice; if CMJ flags twice in a week, auto-select a C-day template; if a thrower’s ER range slips below their individual floor, pivot to a mobility-biased lift selection for forty-eight hours. The logic is yours; FYTT makes it deployable to dozens of athletes without touching every single program.
Coaching move: pre-build automations that tie thresholds to the three in-season templates. When the flag trips, the day plan changes; you still coach, you just do not scramble.
This is the soft skill that makes the hard data useful. Ty Terrell was explicit:
“There is often a misconception that load monitoring is a constraint. We frame it as preparation. We ask: what does the coach value and how fast do we want to play? Then we translate data into game language. ‘That session was twelve game-equivalent minutes’ is easier to digest than a band four mechanical load.”
When buy-in is uneven, keep the conversation frequent and brief. Share one slide with the week’s exposure vs. plan, plus the two adjustments you will make. Use common language like TRIMP, PlayerLoad, and mRSI when you are aligning staff, being sure to define meaningfully; and translate to “pace segments,” “repeat sprint ability,” or “game-equivalent minutes” when you are aligning sport coaches.
Coaching move: schedule a five-minute “look-ahead” huddle after practice. Show the plan for tomorrow, name the two athlete-specific tweaks, and stop talking.
Periodization still matters. The calendar is coming, and your team must be ready when it arrives.
“I still build my long-term plan,” said Brad. “It keeps us from driving the same adaptation forever. In season we keep the plan, then adjust volume and intent based on what the last week actually cost.”
That is the modern balance: a clear long-term arc with micro-adjustments driven by a few trustworthy signals.
Create a five-minute look-ahead: show tomorrow’s exposure plan and two planned tweaks; speak in the language the sport coach uses.
Want to hear more? Check out the entire session in the video below.
Edited for clarity and brevity. Titles at time of recording:
Geoff Ebbs: I am Geoff from FYTT, formerly Northeastern and UMass Boston. I want to start with frameworks: shared language, KPIs, and a coherent philosophy. Todd, how did you build that with Brad and the Sox?
Todd Kubacki: We begin with the demands of the game: positional exposures and weekly rhythms. From there, we work back to training principles and systems. We align on running progressions and preparation standards, then use monitoring to adjust daily and weekly.
Geoff: Load is bigger than mechanics; there is psychological and contextual stress as well. How do you account for that?
Todd: We combine objective data with observation and conversation. Brad sees patterns on the field and in the weight room; we map that to loading prescriptions. The aim is nightly freshness and long-term availability.
Geoff: Ty, Oklahoma women’s basketball plays at pace. What do you monitor, and how do you balance output and health?
Ty Terrell: First, understand game demands: pace segments and peak windows. We monitor heart-rate strain and session-RPE for internal load; we jump CMJ three times a week for neuromuscular status with flags for deviations; we track external exposures in practice. Not everyone recovers the same, so our recovery tactics and day plans are individualized.
Geoff: Any single force-plate metric you lean on?
Ty: No single silver bullet. We look at impulse, depth, and strategy markers like mRSI. Breaking RFD is volatile, so we interpret it in context. The pattern across metrics drives the decision.
Geoff: Do you set hard seven-day ceilings?
Ty: I prefer principles over hard rules. Identify your high days, the spacing between them, and the run-up to games. The sport dictates reality; performance, medical, and nutrition become the flexible back end that adapts.
Geoff: Brad, you have to program inside a brutal schedule. How do you adjust quickly?
Brad Lawson: We microdose. Most sessions are fifteen to twenty minutes of work. If a player feels great, we hit a higher-intent A-day; if banged up, we pivot to a B or C template. The menu is simple, so we can stay agile.
Geoff: Do you shrink the exercise menu in season?
Brad: Yes. Keep it general and simple; give what the game does not. Constraints do the individualizing: exercise choice, tempo, range, or isometric emphasis. Todd’s data points us to the right constraint for the need.
Geoff: Todd, too much data can paralyze. How do you prevent that?
Todd: Decide when you want information, how you will use it, and what flags trigger which responses. Lean on history, keep the athlete’s goals central, and collaborate across S+C, AT, PT, and mental performance. Consistency wins.
Geoff: Ty, organizational buy-in is everything. How do you get it at the pro and college levels?
Ty: Start with the coach’s values and language. Frame load monitoring as preparation, not restriction. Translate metrics into game-relevant terms like game-equivalent minutes. Keep communicating; influence compounds over time.
Geoff: Brad, communicating data to athletes can be tricky. Your approach?
Brad: Tell them the truth, often. Flag declines and celebrate strengths. When players understand the why, they want to co-plan the change.
Audience Q&A — Highlights
