How GPS helps you play better football
How can GPS sports tracking help you play better football? Well, to help answer that question let’s look at
how professional players use GPS technology. Most big clubs use technology to record lots of information
about their players’ training. You might guess that they are tracking how far their players run, and maybe
what speeds they hit. In actual fact, some clubs measure a few numbers for each player and other clubs can
measure dozens of different numbers. They also have teams of scientists who pour (and argue) over the
numbers and decide on different drills and interventions (more physiotherapy, different gym work and
perhaps even an extra rest day).
While this sounds complicated most professional clubs are really trying to get a handle on two basic ideas –
each player’s workload and their level of intensity. Let’s consider both of those ideas separately.
VOLUME
Workload, also known as Volume, is amount of work a player gets through. This includes all the training
sessions and all the matches that a player takes part in. It can be measured in different ways, the simplest
is the total distance you run. There are better ways that take into account how hard you run and how much
you accelerate, but for now let’s just think of workload as the amount of ground you cover. During Champions
League matches you will often see statistics presented, especially when players are substituted … “player X
ran 9.5 km in 75 minutes”. That’s an example of workload measured for one match. Workload can be
measured over a week, over a month or any time period you like up to full seasons.
And it’s easy to see why Workload is important –a few tough matches followed by some long training sessions
will make it very clear! You will be tired, your legs will be sore and you just won’t have that same ability to get
around the park. It’s natural to want to take some extra rest days or at least to reduce your training. The
problem is knowing how much less training to do. If you reduce your training how do you know you’ve kept
the sharpness you need for your next match?
A good football GPS system will let you track your workload across a season. The more training sessions
and matches you measure, the more you can get to understand the patterns that affect your game.
INTENSITY
The second concept that professional clubs and sports scientists like to monitor is Intensity. This idea is
important as all workload is not the same. Covering 5KM in 20 minutes of football is very different to covering
5KM over 60 minutes. Therefore, it is important to understand the character of a training session or of a
match. It’s equally important to understand what level of intensity you need to maintain during a match. Once
you measure intensity, it becomes feasible to try to replicate that intensity during training –especially early in
a season. You can accurately replicate match conditions for short periods without increasing your weekly
training volume to a great extent. This can help to maintain player freshness while still preparing properly for
matches.
Intensity is typically tracked using metres per minute or ratios of active time to idle time. Other measures
include top speeds and various measurements of your body’s power output.
How GPS helps you play better football
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