What might look like athlete monitoring in some schools ends up actually just being pseudo-random deployment of technology. Of course, all of the above technology solutions have utility, but technology for technology's sake should not be the driver when deciding what you might want to measure. If it is, your athlete monitoring will falter.

There are any number of excuses as to why you might not have recorded your data for a given session. Without meaningful data being inputted, monitoring and acting upon that information can’t happen - big problem.

The discussion covered what training load is and some of the ways in which you can assess it. It included tips for monitoring training load in various contexts and considerations for doing so during the adolescent growth spurt. Questions were fielded on the value of individualising thresholds, Acute to Chronic Workload Ratios (ACWR) and the future of both research and practice.

Expecting the monitoring of training load and maturation to provide a singular output value that tells you what to do is a red herring. No matter what you measure, how you measure it, who you tell or what you tell them, athletes will still get injured and respond in ways that are not expected or predicted.