Image by Barry Yanowitz
By Katie Hobbs science@halfvolley.co.uk
Recovery Science and Technology (ReST) have announced the launch of their new product, RestWise.
This revolutionary software is a web-based application that athletes can enter a daily series of physical and psychological ‘markers’ into. The RestWise algorithm then analyses these markers to generate a Daily Recovery Score.
RestWise believe the recovery score can be used to answer the question that plagues every athlete: “am I training too hard…or not hard enough?”
Half Volley spoke to Dr Vern Neville, an expert in the physiology of training and recovery, who provided the primary scientific expertise on which the RestWise algorithm was based.
The balance between training and recovery
“The key to increasing athletic performance is the ability to successfully balance the fine line between too much and too little training. It is often this intuition that defines athletic success and not necessarily talent or effort.”
Dr Neville explained that few athletes possess an innate ability to precisely appreciate this balance and need to rely on external input from exercise-load logs or coaching and support staff.
The coach’s role in maintaining this training-recovery equilibrium
“This is what is often described as “the art of coaching”. Coaches typically use a combination of inputs including their experience, athletes’ body language, changes in technique, immunological / biological markers, physiological monitoring, performance tests, exercise-load logs, and questionnaires.
“These, and countless other tools are used to determine when to push and when to rest an athlete.”
However, these techniques require a lot of time from the coach and athletes, especially if the needs of multiple athletes or an entire team are being catered for.
RestWise’s solution
“What RestWise does is provide a simple evidence based solution by combining a number of non-invasive, known markers of stress, fatigue and over-reaching into a specifically weighted algorithm.
“The markers include: a high resting heart rate, reductions in body mass, poor sleep quality, dehydration, loss of appetite, muscle soreness, low energy, illness and reduced training workload are all signs of fatigue, stress or over-reaching.
“With only a body mass scale and a means of measuring pulse, any athlete can enter their data online and receive immediate feedback on their individual level of training readiness or ‘recovery index’.”
Future Developments
Dr Neville explained that very little is understood about how to predict, or even identify, over-reaching or fatigue in athletes, and as yet there is no ‘gold-standard’ test to predict over-reaching other than performance itself.
“The research and development process of the software is therefore continuous and the objective is to combine as many known markers as possible into the software to provide an informative tool.”
The possibility of a new science version of RestWise was also revealed, which will incorporate more complex markers and invasive tests that are currently used by some athletes and teams.
Despite the fact that RestWise was only just launched in the USA, the support from elite athletes has been tremendous. There are already many top level athletes using the product, and it is suspected by the RestWise team that coaches and athletes in the UK and Europe will soon be interested.
