Boosting Athletic Performance with Output Hub's Top Features: A Comprehensive Overview

We know that progress in athletes’ training and rehab journeys is all down to the hard work of coaches and athletes, and at Output we keep performance tracking simple, objective and efficient. Our Hub system is the basis of this and is built on the key principles of:

• Efficient data amalgamation
• Simple and efficient data visualisation
• Consolidating S&C and Physio data
• Creating community
• Driving athlete intent

Here’s an overview of our top Hub features!

1. LIVE MODE

For our users, establishing a competitive environment has been a key aspect in driving intent within a training or testing session. Output users really liked the idea of a live leaderboard functionality within Hub to add additional competitiveness to their training and testing days. Hub Live builds on this idea. The cloud-based functionality of Hub ensures that results are instantaneously posted once an exercise is completed, giving you the means to drive inter-athlete competitiveness within a session. Within Hub Live, a live activity feed and leaderboard are displayed side by side. This can be filtered to display results from the last 24hrs or week, depending on your preference. Within Hub Live there is also the option to filter down results to a specific group or a number of groups if desired. With the live leaderboard and activity feed displaying real time results, Hub Live will ensure your athletes are maximising their performance in training!

2. LEADERBOARDS

Driving intent within a training or testing session has been key for our end-users. By having a live Leaderboard function, it brings competitiveness to their training/testing days and maximises intent from your athletes. Through a user-friendly display of athletes' scores for a particular exercise, you can toggle between metrics and time periods to see who is coming out on top - **in real time!**‍

Within Hub Leaderboards you can create up to 4 different leaderboards, which can be created for different exercises, groups and time periods. The leaderboards can subsequently be filtered within a training setting allowing athletes to clearly see who has set the records within their groups on specific exercises. With the athlete management landscape ever increasing, it is becoming more and more common for the ability to benchmark against fellow athletes. The leaderboard functionality of the Hub ensures that you, as a coach, can clearly recognise those who are struggling and those who are outperforming the rest of the group. Leaderboards also give the athletes themselves the ability to see how they are performing for various exercises in comparison to their teammates, facilitating the means in which to drive competition between your athletes. See how one of our users, Kyle Jacksic, Director of Strength & Conditioning at Ardrey Kell HS and NHSSCA North Carolina State Director uses the Output leaderboards function to drive intent in the weight room here.

3. ATHLETE HUB

Difficulty to manage silos of data has previously been identified as a major pain point for various sports-professionals. Such practitioners ranging from physios at world-leading sports clubs, to directors of performance who want a system that instantaneously amalgamates wellness and performance tracking data, whilst allowing simple and effective data visualisation options. A key requested feature included the ability to longitudinally track the athletes’ they work with in order to create a holistic athlete profile, which in turn aids in objective decision making and effective coach-athlete communication.

This is where the Athlete Hub comes in. Here you are first greeted with all of the athlete profiles registered to your account in alphabetical order, showing you a range of chosen exercises along with their associated traffic light indicator. There are different ways in how these athletes are sorted with options to prioritise your athletes who were most recently tested, in need of attention and the top performing athletes, allowing you to tailor the Athlete Hub. There is then the option to click on an individual athlete in order to easily view their profile and data in more detail, through numerous different graphs and tables, allowing you to see trends in the athlete’s performance. The Hub also provides a comprehensive and practical place to store the data of individual athletes without the hassle of acquiring third party Athlete Management Systems. Additional athletes can easily be added either individually or in bulk within the Athlete Hub, ensuring that you have each team member's details on record to allow for seamless testing.

Athlete Level Logins

An athlete level login allows you to create an account for your athlete or Athlete Profile in order to allow them to access their data on the Capture App via their own login. When the athlete has downloaded the Capture App, they will have access to complete their account setup and do the following:

• Review their own progress
• Collect data remotely
• Visualise their improvements
• Allow coaches/physios to review exercise compliance & improvements

4. Load-Velocity (L-V) Profiling

Load-Velocity profiling (LVP) is an excellent way to monitor and profile an athlete's strength, power, and velocity capabilities. It can also be used to estimate an athlete's one-rep max (1RM).To establish an LVP for your athlete, it is recommended to first perform a standardized warm-up, in order to mitigate any risk of injury. Once the athlete is warmed up, you will aim to complete 3-sets of the exercise at various loads of the athlete's predicted 1RM. The aim is to perform each set with maximal intent, as failure to do so will lead to inconsistent data. An example of a Back Squat is seen below:

• Set 1 - 40% x 3 reps - (Something that feels light)
• Set 2 - 60% x 3 reps - (Something that feels sort of heavy)
• Set 3 - 80% x 3 reps - (Something that feels heavy)

You can then profile the athlete inside the Output Hub. Via Athlete Hub > Select the athlete > Profiling Chart > Select performed sets. Learn more about the Load-Velocity (L-V) Profiling section in Hub in our blog here or watch our CEO Martin O'Reilly walk you through the step-by-step approach to Load-Velocity profiling below:

5. Charting

With the ability to track multiple different metrics on the same graph, coaches can visually see certain trends in the data and highlight where an athlete may be peaking or having a down day.  You can chart for wither an athlete or group. You can choose up to a total of 4 different exercises and an associated metric. As soon as you have selected more than one, the average line and standard deviation will be removed from the graph. You have the option to customise what time period you would like to see on the graph and also how you would like to aggregate the data. By clicking into the advanced options, you can further customise how this data is visualised. Once you have selected the data you wish to view, you can quickly download it as a picture, export it as a .csv, or enter a full screen view.

6. REPORT GENERATION

Report generation has always been identified as a major pain point across the sporting community. The creation of reports for individual players can be very time consuming - the data has to be collated, interpreted, and then presented in a way that the reader will understand. This process may then have to be repeated for each athlete and/or team. It was also highlighted that reports play a crucial role in organisational communication. Whether they are informing a coach on a particular player's rehab journey, or informing a parent how their child has been progressing throughout the year. This is where Report Generation comes in, allowing you to display data concisely.

When creating reports, you are given the option to create a report for an entire group, or for a single athlete. This allows you to give feedback to athletes as a whole or on an individual basis. You simply select the metrics that you want to be included in the report, how you would like them to be displayed, and for what time period. Notes can then be added to the report to explain to the athlete/group how they are progressing or what they may need more work on. The template created can also be saved for future use, meaning you save a lot of time as you do not have to create a new report each time. The report can then be automatically sent via email to whomever you want, or can be downloaded as a PDF from the Hub.

7. GROUP HUB

The majority of coaches don’t work with just one athlete or one team. We recognise the difficulties associated with differentiating their clientele in order to quickly identify who may be falling behind in a certain team, or who is excelling in a class group, or trends occurring across various groups they work with throughout the year. The Group Hub solves this problem.

Here, it allows you to sort various athletes together into a group. Whether you want to divide athletes into teams, smaller groups, class groups, positions, or sports, it is completely up to you. This ensures that athlete management data is customizable to whatever specifications you desire. The graphing feature within the Group Hub allows you to view and compare individual athletes within a specific group, showing improvements and deteriorations across the data you have collected over a chosen time period. This particularly helps to identify any athlete within that group who may be falling behind or who is excelling. It can also be used to show the athletes themselves how they are performing for various exercises in comparison to their teammates for example.

8. WORKOUTS

We understand that time is invaluable. We know that progress in athletes’ training and rehab journeys is all down to the hard work of coaches and athletes, and at Output we play the role of keeping performance tracking simple, objective and efficient. We quickly recognised the need to be able to build out various sessions for training, testing and monitoring to allow for more seamless operations day-to-day. This is where Workouts come in.

The Workouts feature allows for an easier flow to your session if you are coaching a group of athletes. It mitigates the need to jump in and out of various exercises that may be a part of your session, and athletes themselves can easily run through it. It can also aid both S&C coaches and physiotherapists in creating their testing protocols in order to run through sessions more efficiently, allowing more time to be dedicated to the athlete/patient themselves.

With the group assignment feature, coaches can assign workouts to specific groups of athletes. When the athletes log on to their Output Capture app, they will only see workouts that have been assigned to their group. Learn how this feature can streamline your processes by checking out our walk-through video below:

9. EXPORT DATA

With this feature, coaches have the ability to take the data they collected with Output and export it for external use or analysis. When exporting data, you are given the option to export data for an entire group, or for a single athlete. You simply select the exercises that you want exported and the desired date range. There is also the option to export weight, height and wellness measurements. When exporting data for multiple exercises, there is the option to split the files by exercise. The data can then be exported and viewed in Excel.