Dr Vern Neville with Team GB High Jumper and Loughborough University Sports Scholar, Stephanie Pywell © Loughborough University

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Restwise

Loughborough University

Loughborough University’s School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

cubed logo © British Council

Sports Training Tool

Recovery tool
As an athlete, training to be the best you can be, you need a plan of action. It can’t be all work and no play, knowing when to stop is as important. Rest gives the body a chance to fix itself and get stronger. Loughborough University, the HQ for the London 2012 Olympic Games Team GB, is where Dr Vern Neville has honed his Restwise software. A professional America’s Cup sailor, scientist and coach, Neville has spent over a decade analysing the training patterns of elite athletes from the worlds of rugby, sailing, soccer, cycling and Formula 1.

Simple testing
The inspiration for Restwise was an injury Neville himself got from over-training. He studied the recovery and illness markers for elite athletes, so putting it all together into one very simple and easy to use recovery tool made sense. The tool uses eleven different markers of stress and fatigue, such as resting heart rate, sleep, hydration, mood, appetite, muscle soreness and these are combined into an algorithm to give a score for the body’s recovery status. The algorithm amalgamates historical information, such as sleep quality over a number of days. Each of the markers have a different weighting, so if you test positive for one or two of the markers the chances are your fatigue level is probably not that great. But if you get five or more testing positive, the likelihood that your system is over-trained is increased.

Cramp in calf © Jeannot Olivet - iStockphoto

To stress or de-stress?
The success of the tool is its simplicity. It takes 15-20 seconds in the morning to complete on a smartphone, or computer, the feedback is immediate and accessible to coaches. The athlete can follow the recommendation or ignore it, as the tool can be used to intentionally stress the body, or to monitor stress levels and avoid overstressing it.

Neville says, ‘We initially thought that endurance type events would benefit more from the product but we are finding that team sports and power events have taken particularly well to the tool. We have Olympic weight lifters and sprinters and other power athletes who are finding the tool particularly useful.’

Now Neville’s team are adapting Restwise for other markets such as in post-operative recovery and for personal fitness training. Its simplicity means the same technology and smart algorithms can be used in other domains where recovery is vital.

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