How to use the app

What the app is for

The app does three things:

• It takes you through the training programme in thirty short units.
• It lets you log sessions and morning checks, for yourself and your athletes, and reads the numbers by rules you set.
• In Community, it lets you compare notes with other coaches.

What you record about yourself and your athletes stays on your phone or tablet. There is no account.

The app is not a medical device and makes no diagnosis. It shows you the records you keep, read by rules you set.

The app works on phones and tablets, upright or on its side. On a wide screen, Today and an athlete’s page use two columns.

The download link, an APK file for Android, is on the Mobile app page.

The five tabs

• Today. The unit of the day, who is worth a look today, and “Log a session”.
• Learn. The training programme: the modules, the toolkit and the templates.
• Athletes. You and the athletes you coach, with their load, their morning checks, their flags, and your rules.
• Community. Set topics where coaches share how they use wearable data.
• More. Your data, the reminder, help, other pages of the website, and about the project.

The 30-day path

Each day has one unit of about ten minutes. A unit has up to five steps: a part of a module to read or watch, a tool or a template to try, a few questions.

1. On Today, choose “Open day …”. The day’s page lists its steps.
2. Do the steps in order. Each one is a page of the programme. Some end with a button on the page; the step tells you which. Come back to the day’s page when you are done.
3. Choose “Mark day … as done”.

Nothing resets if you miss a day. The path continues where you stopped, and “See the 30 days”, on the day’s page, shows every day, so you can go back or look ahead.

The units are pages of the WEARCOACH website, shown inside the app. They need an internet connection. A template step is a start: the page keeps what you type, and you finish it in your own time.

Start with yourself

The first person in Athletes is you. Log a few of your own sessions and read the numbers before you collect anyone else’s. You do not have to wait for the path: logging works from the first day.

Add an athlete

1. In Athletes, choose “Add an athlete”.
2. Give a name or a nickname. Initials are enough: only you see it.
3. Tell the athlete what you record and why, and ask for their agreement. For an athlete under 16, a parent or guardian must agree as well; the law of your country may set a different age. “Open the consent statement” shows the programme’s statement, Template A1.
4. Switch on “Consent is in place”. You cannot add the athlete without it.
5. Choose “Add athlete”.

Log a session

After training, choose “Log a session” on the athlete’s page. Enter the day, the duration in minutes and the RPE: how hard the session was for the athlete, from 0 to 10, where 0 is rest and 10 is maximal. Ask the athlete; do not guess. The words beside the numbers are from Foster et al. (2001).

The app multiplies the two: session load = RPE × minutes, in arbitrary units (AU). A 60-minute session at RPE 7 has a load of 420 AU.

When several people did the same training, choose “Log a session” on Today, or “Log one session for several people” in Athletes: one day, one duration, and an RPE for each person who trained. Anyone without an RPE is left out.

The load numbers

On an athlete’s page, under “Training load”:

• Last 7 days (acute load). The total session load of the last 7 days.
• Chronic load. The average weekly load of the last four weeks, the last 7 days included.
• ACWR. The last 7 days divided by the chronic load. It needs four weeks of history: the app shows it once the athlete’s first session is at least three weeks old. Until then it shows no ratio and says why.

Under “More numbers”:

• Monotony. The mean daily load divided by its standard deviation, over the week.
• Strain. The weekly load multiplied by monotony.

Under the ACWR the app shows how the programme reads it. The often-cited range is about 0.8 to 1.3. ACWR is a useful prompt, not a verdict: when it jumps, first find out why the week was heavy. A session you did not log makes the numbers wrong: a gap in the last 7 days lowers the ratio, a gap in the weeks before raises it.

The morning check

On an athlete’s page, choose “Record the morning check”. You can record:

• hours slept last night,
• morning HRV, if it is measured the same way every morning,
• five wellness items, each rated from 1 to 5. A higher number always means the athlete feels better: sleep quality (1 very poor, 5 very good), fatigue (1 very tired, 5 very fresh), soreness (1 very sore, 5 no soreness), mood (1 very low, 5 very good) and stress (1 very stressed, 5 very relaxed),
• whether the athlete reports symptoms,
• a short note.

You need not fill in everything: one value is enough. If you rate wellness, rate all five items.

Flags

The app compares the morning’s sleep and wellness, and the HRV trend of the last 5 to 7 days, with the athlete’s own baseline, never with the squad. One low HRV morning alone can be yellow, never more.

The programme asks for at least four to six weeks of data before you draw conclusions from a baseline. The app reads the first flag four weeks after the first morning check; for the HRV trend it also needs at least five readings in the last seven days. Until then it shows no flag and says what is still missing. Reported symptoms raise a red flag from the first day.

The programme’s templates use four flags. In their example:

• Green. Within the athlete’s normal range. Train as planned.
• Yellow. One input one standard deviation below the baseline, the others stable. Monitor, and ask the athlete how they feel. No change to the session.
• Orange. Two standard deviations on one input, or yellow on several inputs together. Reduce intensity or volume by a set amount, and discuss it with the athlete.
• Red. Three standard deviations on any input, or the athlete reports symptoms. Substitute the session, and escalate to medical staff for review.

Beside every flag the app shows why it is there and what you decided to do. When the flag is not green, it also shows where the programme explains it. Never act on one metric alone.

A flag is a prompt for a coach. It is not a medical finding. Where a decision belongs to a doctor or a physiotherapist, refer.

Your thresholds

Some rules are fixed thresholds instead of a distance from the baseline, for example an ACWR above 1.5, or less than 7 hours of sleep on 3 nights in a row. An athlete’s page lists each one as “Crossed”, “Not crossed” or “Not yet”, with the reason. A crossed threshold puts the athlete under “Worth a look today”.

The programme names no flag for a crossed threshold, so to start with it changes no colour. Which flag it raises, if any, is your choice: see “When a threshold is crossed” in your rules.

Your rules

The rules are yours. You find them in Athletes, under “Your rules”. They start as the programme’s examples, and you change them to fit your sport and your athletes, before the season and not on the day:

• which inputs you read, four at most. The app can read five of the programme’s eight inputs: ACWR, HRV trend, sleep duration, wellness and weekly strain;
• the threshold for each input, and the flag a crossed threshold raises;
• what each flag means for the session, and who is involved.

“Use the programme’s examples again” brings the examples back. Show your rules to your medical or physiotherapy contact before the season.

Community

Choose a topic and read what other coaches wrote. To add your own experience, choose “Write a comment”.

1. The first time, read the rules and accept them: “I have read the rules and I accept them.”
2. Give a name and write, in English. A first name or a nickname is enough. There is no account. The window says what the forum accepts.
3. Choose “Publish the comment”. A comment that passes the forum’s checks appears straight away, and anyone can read it. You cannot change it afterwards.

On every comment you can do two things:

• Report. If a comment breaks the rules, choose “Report”. It asks you first. The comment is then hidden for everyone, and the project team looks at it within 24 hours.
• Hide comments from this person. This hides everything that person wrote, on your device only. “Show again” brings it back.

To have a comment of your own removed, write to info@welln.ist.

Do not name athletes, and do not write their health data. “How it works” and “Before you write” on the Community page say more.

Your data

All of this is under More:

• Reminder. Turn on “Daily reminder” and choose its time.
• Export. “Export my data” writes what you entered in Athletes, your rules and your place in the path into one file. Use it to keep a copy or to move to another device. Your answers in the Learn pages are not in it: the Learn page has its own way to copy them to a file. Anyone who has the export file can read it.
• Import. “Import data” replaces what is on the device with what is in the file.
• Delete. “Delete all data” deletes everything you have entered in the app, your rules, your place in the path, the reminder, and what the programme’s pages keep in the app. On an athlete’s page, “Remove athlete” deletes that athlete with their sessions and morning checks.

What you delete cannot be brought back, unless you kept an exported file or a backup of your device. The app keeps no copy for you: export one before you change devices, and import it on the new one. If your device backs itself up, the app’s data can be part of that backup. More about your data: Privacy in the WEARCOACH app.

Where to read more

The formulas, the flags and the example thresholds in the app come from the training programme. The modules explain them: Learn. The templates behind the app’s screens are the load calculation sheet, the individual athlete profile, the daily decision rules and the early-warning checklist.

Who is behind the app

The app is published by Vidisport OÜ for the WEARCOACH consortium.

• Questions about the project, the forum or your data: info@welln.ist
• Technical questions about the app: hello@vidisport.net