Author Identifier

Wouter Piet Timmerman: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6085-9330

Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Thesis

Publisher

Edith Cowan University

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

School

School of Medical and Health Sciences

First Supervisor

Chris Abbiss

Second Supervisor

Mandy Stanley

Third Supervisor

Annette Raynor

Fourth Supervisor

Nathan Lawler

Abstract

Athlete monitoring technology has proliferated in the last decades. However, much of what is known about athlete monitoring tends to come from unpublished personal experiences and anecdotal information. In the last decade, considerable athlete monitoring research has been conducted, leading to multiple reviews and consensus statements mainly on athlete monitoring tools and methods. Recognising that athlete monitoring is a human-driven process, typically with the coach as the decision-maker, it is imperative to study coaches given their extensive knowledge and expertise. The overall aim of the thesis was to gain insights into why and how high-level endurance sports coaches use athlete monitoring information to inform training modifications decisions.

This thesis was approached from a pragmatic research paradigm with a critical realism ontology, contextualism epistemology, an intentional theory of language, and an experiential research orientation. Further, the theoretical framework of this thesis includes the biopsychosocial model, complex adaptive systems, and ecological dynamics. Moreover, athlete monitoring was defined as the systematic collection and analysis of data related to an athlete and their training process over time indicating that athlete monitoring is multifaceted and can involve the collection of a wide range of numerical (i.e., quantitative) and non-numerical (i.e., qualitative) data, including but not limited to training, recovery, health and well-being, and behaviours.

The first study was a scoping review to map and summarise the sports coaches’ and support staff’s perspectives on athlete monitoring to explore the breadth of literature, identify knowledge gaps and inform future research based on the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology. From the 4381 identified records, 42 met the eligibility criteria with 55% of the studies being published between 2020-2022. Almost all studies were conducted within the Anglosphere and with coaches or support staff working with athletes at a national or international level. This study indicated that the main reasons for coaches and support staff to implement monitoring were to reduce injury and illness, inform the training program, and improve or maintain performance. While athlete monitoring was perceived as valuable and effective, coaches and support staff expected a higher effectiveness, especially from training load monitoring, while believing in the potential of athlete monitoring. Lastly, the coaches and support staff acknowledge that athlete monitoring, and specifically the quantification, is not an all-encompassing solution, believing it should be part of the bigger picture. This scoping review highlighted that to coaches and support staff athlete monitoring extends beyond quantitative information and encompasses qualitative subjective information underscoring the irreplaceable value of close and regular monitoring. This substantiates that coaches and support staff will remain central to athlete monitoring, even amidst the anticipated technological process. Given the limited research on athlete monitoring perspectives of world-class coaches in endurance sports, this became the focus of the next study.

The second study was a qualitative descriptive study based on interviews which were analysed guided by Braun & Clarke’s (2022) reflexive thematic analysis, aimed to describe and explore the athlete monitoring perspectives of world-class endurance sports coaches across various endurance sporting disciplines. Twelve world-class coaches participated in semi-structured interviews (78 ± 9min). Three themes were generated: “Bringing the best out of every athlete”, “The central role of relationships and communication in coaching and athlete monitoring”, and “Leveraging athlete monitoring for learning, understanding, and decision-making”. The analysis highlighted that world-class coaches consider athlete monitoring as all-encompassing, and while athlete monitoring does not guarantee success, it can substantially contribute towards it. The world-class endurance coaches emphasised that athlete monitoring is a versatile tool that can help bring out the best in athletes and support learning and decision[1]making processes, but it should not be seen as the holy grail. Further, they place significant value on balancing multiple data types (i.e. objective, quantified subjective, and qualitative subjective data), contextualising data to avoid misinterpretation, and not overreacting to athlete monitoring data. The coaches also focused on developing strong coach-athlete relationships founded on trust and open communication, which enables and facilitates effective athlete monitoring. Lastly, they consider the coach as the sense- and decision-maker of athlete monitoring information. However, limited research has investigated the decision-making practices of endurance coaches in situ, therefore the following study focused on high-level coaches’ training modification decision-making.

The third study was guided by Stake’s (1995) case study methodology and was a longitudinal instrumental case study of world-class cycling and an elite rowing coach. This case study purpose was to improve our understanding of how training modifications were made by professional high-level endurance coaches and explore the role athlete monitoring has in this. The data collection included four semi-structured interviews and eleven retrospective verbal reports with stimulated recall, three group meetings, and eight days of field observations (totalling 1024min of recordings, excluding field work times and notes). The qualitative analysis generated three themes regarding coaches’ athlete monitoring and training modifications: “The only constant in coaching is change: Anticipating modifications and being ready for the unexpected”, “Gathering, complementing, and balancing information for continuous situational assessment and training modification triggers”, and “Empowering athlete autonomy of training modification decision-making within coach boundaries”. The main findings of this case study analysis indicated that anticipatory thinking and conditional decision-making enhanced coaches’ adaptability to modify training and that athlete monitoring had a central role to modify training as key component of the continuous situational assessment through complementing and balancing various data sources and types. However, often non-athlete monitoring information, such as weather, logistics, and organisational decisions, was the decision trigger. Coaches share training modification decision-making by empowering athletes to autonomously modify training sessions within agreed-upon boundaries with coaches utilising coach-athlete communication as a key athlete monitoring tool. Moreover, training modification differences between the coaches reflected mainly sport-specific and organisational factors, and highlighted a disparity in injury occurrences between professional cyclists and under-23 rowers. This study reinforced the value of being adaptable to emerging circumstances highlighting that high-level endurance coaches maintained regular, open communication, and balancing multiple information sources to enhance training effectiveness.

This thesis contributes to the field by eliciting expert endurance coaches’ knowledge and practice on athlete monitoring in a unique sample of high-level coaches through qualitative methodologies. The findings further support the importance of athlete monitoring, while cautioning against overestimating its capabilities and advocating for a critical perspective. The findings also underscore the importance of high-level coaches integrating both quantitative and qualitative data, developing and maintaining a strong coach-athlete relationship, and being adaptable to modify training by employing anticipatory thinking and conditional decision-making. This thesis, highlights the importance of human-dependant aspects of athlete monitoring, offering important insights into the future role of sports coaches and support staff, future research and practical applications in sports coaching.

DOI

10.25958/gcmr-ac54

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