In this article, Firstbeat’s Sport Scientist Graham Stark explains the importance of conducting regular fitness tests with your athletes, the differences in maximal and submaximal fitness testing, and how Firstbeat’s…
Graham StarkSports Scientist
Created by Sport Scientist Dr. James Malone, this guide provides a simple structure for how a team can use recovery monitoring (QRT), fitness testing (SMFT), and internal load management…
Heart rate monitoring has long been a valuable tool for understanding training load. Traditionally, heart rate zones have been used to describe intensity and guide training prescription. While this approach…
In ice hockey, tracking player load is essential for optimizing performance and preventing injury. Traditionally, one commonly used metric is skating distance—the total meters/feet (or kilometers/miles) a player skates during…
Joel WenningJoel Wenning, Customer Success Manager, Firstbeat
This article is written by Domenik Theodorou, a Firstbeat Sports client and Performance Coach at RASTA Vechta, a professional basketball team competing in the Basketball Bundesliga (BBL) and FIBA Basketball…
Domenik TheodorouPerformance Coach, RASTA Vechta
This article is written by Domenik Theodorou, a Firstbeat Sports client and Performance Coach at RASTA Vechta, a professional basketball team competing in the Basketball Bundesliga (BBL) and FIBA Basketball…
Domenik TheodorouPerformance Coach, RASTA Vechta
The Return-to-Play process, or indeed any conditioning program that is not in the form of the athlete’s sport, can be a challenge to manage. Questions such as how much should…
Graham StarkSports Scientist
In this article, we’ll introduce the Weekly Reporting feature from Firstbeat Sports. As a coach, you can use this feature to: See key training load data over a 7-day period…
Preparing for each game is perhaps one of the most important considerations when coaches are planning their weekly training schedule, as they aim to arrive at game day with players as fresh as possible.
Graham StarkSports Scientist
In today’s elite football environment, load monitoring has become a non-negotiable component of high-performance coaching. Balancing training stimulus, recovery, and performance demands is complex, and it requires more than just…
How do you measure a training session? By the hours you put in? Maybe the distances racked up? Or asking an athlete for verbal feedback? These are useful guides, but…
TRIMP (Training Impulse) is a powerful metric that helps sports teams quantify training load using heart rate data, enabling coaches to optimize performance, manage injury risk, and ensure athletes are game-ready….
In today’s competitive sports landscape, simply tracking heart rate isn’t enough. Coaches need deeper insights to optimize training, manage injury risk, and maximize performance. Firstbeat Sports takes team heart rate…
Selecting the right physiological monitoring tool can significantly impact how athletes train, recover, and perform. An effective system goes beyond basic data tracking, offering insights that empower teams to make…
In this article, guest writer and Firstbeat client Konstantinos Stratakis discusses the role of off-season conditioning in team sports, including balancing sports-specific and non-specific conditioning like HIIT. He also explores…
Konstantinos StratakisPerformance and Sports Scientist
At Firstbeat Sports, we analyzed over 4 million measurements to compare the time athletes spend in each heart rate zone across various sports. The findings reveal intriguing patterns that highlight…
Subjectively speaking (based on self-reporting), women experience more stress than men, and objective, heart rate variability -based data seems to concur with this: women have more physiological stress than men. The result is perhaps surprising because women do more things “right” (or at least better than men…) when it comes to recovery. This blog discusses the differences between men and women in the area of stress, recovery and sleep – and speculates on some of the possible explanations and effects on daily well-being.
The Team Training Session Report is an interactive web-based report that utilizes historical data to contextualize the numbers of the current session, making them easier to understand and saving coaches…
This article is written by Domenik Theodorou, a Firstbeat Sports client and Performance Coach at RASTA Vechta, a professional basketball team competing in the Basketball Bundesliga (BBL). Prior to his…
Domenik TheodorouPerformance Coach, RASTA Vechta
