Maximising the use of GPS to understand athlete performance and fatigue with Amber Rowell, Aaron Coutts and Mathieu Lacome

This week's Pacey Performance Podcast sees Rob speaking to Aaron Coutts, Amber Rowell and Mathieu Lacome. This episode was recorded as a Sportsmith Live roundtable in 2021 but as GPS monitoring becomes more mainstream, we needed to get this out as a podcast.

We kick off this roundtable with Aaron explaining why its so important to have a clear question as to why you are using GPS in the first place. Without that it becomes difficult to get the full value from any technology. We then dive into the decision making process around which metrics matter and which don't depending on the questions that need answering. Amber and Mathieu give us some incredible insights from an applied perspective of how they have gone through this process in professional football (soccer) in MLS and in Europe.

The second half of this episode has Amber and Mathieu chatting about multimechanical modelling as well as how to use GPS to monitor and manage fatigue on an acute and long term basis. We also have an open discussion on how best to present GPS data to coaches and ensure that desicions can be made with all the information available.

If you want an all encompassing episode on how to best use GPS to monitor performance and fatigue, this episode is for you.

Main talking points -

• The importance of having a clear question before collecting any data
• What external load actually is
• How do we choose the most relevant metrics out of the thousands that are available
• Using measures that coaches understand
• What decisions are being made at the higest level using GPS
• How you can use GPS to plan a one-game week versus a two-game week
• Different metrics being useful for different sports
• What is multimechanical modelling and is it useful
• Using GPS to guide "top ups" with those that haven't played