See your squad’s week before Tuesday’s session

Each player rates how hard every session felt from 1 to 10 and logs how long it lasted. Rating × minutes is that session’s load (session RPE, Foster and colleagues, 2001). It’s simple, cheap and tracks well with heart-rate and GPS measures in team sports.

We compare each player with their own usual week (the average of their last four), not with anyone else. A week well above their usual isn’t a red flag on its own: it’s a prompt to plan the next few days sensibly. Steady build-ups are easier to recover from than sudden big jumps.

We deliberately don’t show “danger zones” or injury risk. The research behind those zones has been heavily criticised (Impellizzeri and colleagues, 2020) and no number can tell you who will get injured. Use the numbers to plan, and your eyes and conversations for the rest.

Tuesday is your main night: contact, conditioning and full-pace work all fit, because there are three or four days to recover before the game.

Thursday should be sharp and short: shape, set piece and decision-making at pace, with little full contact. Keep running smooth rather than flat out: flat-out sprinting is best done three or more days before a game. Thursday isn’t the night to get fit: fitness built two days before a game can’t show up on Saturday, but the tiredness can.

No game this week? That’s the week to push conditioning and contact a little more.

Many of your players already do sprints before club training in the Match Ready app, so they arrive warm and have done their top-speed work.

Regularly running close to top speed is part of being ready for match demands (Malone and colleagues, 2017; Colby and colleagues, 2018). Players who go weeks without it, then sprint flat out in a game, are being asked for something they haven’t practised.

What works: a proper warm-up that builds up in speed, then four to six flat-out runs of 20 to 40 metres with a full minute or two between, early in the session while players are fresh. Quality, not fatigue: stop when the runs slow down.

Once a week in season is a good target, on your night furthest from the game (not the night or two before it). The dashboard shows who hasn’t hit top speed recently.

Players answer four quick questions most mornings: sleep, soreness, energy and mood, each compared with their own normal. Simple questionnaires like this pick up the effects of training better than many lab measures (Saw and colleagues, 2016).

Green: as normal. Amber: the app trims extras from their gym session. Red: the app gives them a lighter recovery session. It’s their own advice, not a ban: a red player can still train with you, but it’s worth a word about how they’re doing and whether to keep full contact light that night.

Several red mornings in a row, especially with poor sleep or low mood, are often about more than rugby: work, money, family, health. You don’t need to fix anything. Ask how they’re doing, away from the group, and listen.

If they’re struggling, point them to their GP or NHS 111. If you’re worried about their safety right now, they can call Samaritans free on 116 123, any time; in an emergency, call 999. Your club’s welfare officer can help too.

A test is only useful if the next one is run the same way. Same surface, same time of day, same warm-up, same footwear, and not the day after a game.

A quick set most clubs can run in about ten minutes a group: a 10 m and 30 m sprint (best of two, full rest), a standing broad jump (best of three) and a time trial for running fitness. Players log their strength in the app as they train, so you see their estimated maxes all season without a test day.

Two or three test points a season are plenty: pre-season, around Christmas, and the end of the season.