Weightlifting metrics

[Elle]

Once the world championships are over I go back to thinking about "my" weightlifting.

I really like data and I'm fascinated by Excel potential, so I'm trying to create the perfect spreadsheet for weightlifiting programming.

What metrics do you think are important? Currently my file calculates:
- number of total lifts for the session and for the week, divided for foundamental exercises and additional exercises;
- Tonnage for the foundamental exercise for the day and the week;
- Average absolute intensity and average relative intensity for the foundamental exercises
- number of lifts for each class of foundamental exercise (sn, sn variant, cl, clean v, jerk, jerk v, squat, pulls etc etc)
- number of lifts for each intensity group ( below 60%, from 60 to 70 etc etc)
- I would like to implement the K value but... How is it calculated? Just from data from olympic lifts or also from squat, pulls etc etc?

Yes yes yes I know what you are think: "athletes are not numbers, there is a large part of unpredictability in training, the data from classic studies say little due to doping, collection method etc etc"

Ok, you are right but that's my fantasy and I enjoy working with Excel (even if I'm a beginner).

So, returning to the question: how would you like your Excel sheet to look like? What metrics should it contain?

[Hawkpeter]

I see the attraction to the data and metrics of weightlifting as a draw for a lot of people - youre not alone.

Have you taken a look at Excel Tricks for Sport? You might get some further ideas. https://www.youtube.com/@ExcelTricksforSports

Tonnage Ive become less interested in over time, some times as a curiosity I might examine it but its usually its in tonic lifts like squatting, pulling and pressing.

The most perplexing thing is assessing the relative stress of reps that are differentiated by design eg reps from floor, hang or blocks and reps that are part of a complex or doubles and triples. Very quickly you notice that one rep is not one rep.

So whether you are going to count reps within certain deciles or calculate K value or whatever - you dont have a complete picture. You get a bunch of inputs. And training is primarily an input, however we still need outputs, and rep quality is an output we should care greatly about. The spread sheet doesnt do that, and can't do that.

The good thing is that data collection comparison across athletes isn't nearly as important as for each athlete individually. We dont need to care about the varied extent of a program for a team because some are stressed more from reps from the floor than others - we should be able to be individually nuance the program to disrupt homeostasis based on previous and fitness and current preparedness.

[Elle]

Thank you!

I undertand what you mean and you are right, but it's funny to think that everything can be driven by the data.

You, in your coaching career, what practical solutions have you found for this problem? What tools do you use to plan and monitor training?

Oh, that YouTube channel is fantastic! Very interesting for managing a team, above all. I'm not as good as him, I'll have to improve a bit

[brian.degennaro]

Here is the spreadsheet I use for my athletes. In my years I loved the data acquisition and seeing total tonnage, reps, sets, and so on. I tried for the longest time to come up with quantifying all sorts of variations and aggregating data in master sheets, but have stopped bothering with that.

My athletes think it is fun looking at their progression over weeks and months, cool to see how much "work" they did, and they like the colors. However, at this point, I do not think it matters at all counting all of this beyond tracking workouts, referencing back to general plans and themes when analyzing past trainings that worked, when noticing "oh shit, we loaded up wayyyyy too quickly and now they have kneebola," and for fun. The latter two points are the only reason I look at anyone's training week to week if necessary. It becomes easy to see a sharp increase in tonnage and then notice any aches and pains start coming up and explain it to them that is one of the contributing factors to their shoulders acting up or them being overly fatigued.

I think my coach continues to do it for me out of habit from many years in the USSR, but I think the data collection serves little role in the overall picture unless you are trying to amass so many data points to publish in a journal. The Soviet coaches were required to submit specific data to scientists for this reason, not because it served some greater purpose in the training process. Coaching is an art and coaching what is in front of you matters the most.

[Elle]

Thank you!

Collectiong data is a hard job, and I understand your point of view: a good workout is better than a good spreasheet

Thanks for sharing your spreadsheet, I will share mine (is in italian and it's only the structure, I have to transform it in something easy to read): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 1286185256

That's an experiment, but would be nice to have something easy to use in the everyday coaching. But it seems so difficult (for my level of expertise), it will take time.

[Guima73]

Brian and Elle,

Thank you for allowing acess to the spreadsheets.

[strapping]

I think my coach continues to do it for me out of habit from many years in the USSR, but I think the data collection serves little role in the overall picture unless you are trying to amass so many data points to publish in a journal. The Soviet coaches were required to submit specific data to scientists for this reason, not because it served some greater purpose in the training process. Coaching is an art and coaching what is in front of you matters the most.

In short, this.

Taking a step back, it's important to understand why you want to do something AND why you want to *not* do something. Data collection and analysis can be a lot of work and it's important not to waste your time and effort on something that isn't worth it.

The level of detail has to be appropriate to the lifter, to the coach (burnout) and the job/financial limitations. That's the reality, as much as I wish it wasn't.

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What's often overlooked in these conversations of data acquisition/analysis is subjective data like how someone is feeling in terms of fatigue, life stresses, emotional factors etc.

I think it's more important than objective data gathering, at least as a focus, because it's easier to acquire and analyse objective data. Transforming it into objective data through things like automated questionnaires can/have been done in elite sport settings outside of weightlifting, though often that's in sports with much more funding and personnel.

Something like a session RPE (RPE of the whole session, rather than an exercise) is IMO more applicable as a metric of training stress than trying to manipulate sets/reps/exercise in a formula.

When it comes to highly detailed data gathering for an individual, I'm a fan of the "SOAP note" format that is standard in the medical/healthcare world. Somewhat coincidentally, some people's training logs I've read are formatted in a similar way.



Example (without the typical shorthand and some added flourishes to make a point).

Client Name
Date

Subjective data/measurements
Client reported poor sleep last night ~4 hrs as kids woke her up and she has been stressed.
Ct reports R hip pain at rest flared up to 3/10, reduced to 1/10 after warmup. Typically R hip pn is at 1/10 at rest, nil after warmup.

Objective
Client is shifting her weight/pelvis towards L side when on R leg during stance phase of gait
HR prior to training 60 bpm
HR after training 62 bpm

Assessment
Exercise program
Wall sit: 3x30s (part of warmup)

Snatch: 50%/3, 60%/3, 70%/3 x 2, 75%/3 x 2 (Ct reported 3/10 pain at 75%).

Power clean + jerk: 50%/2+2, 60%/2+2, 70%/1+1, 75%/1+1 x 3
(Ct reported 1/10 pain at 75% first two sets, 5/10 pain last set as she stepped forward on R leg in the jerk)

Front Squat: 80%/3 x 3 (Ct reports 2/10 pain at bottom of the squat)

Client reports increased pain at rest and at given intensities compared to last week, likely due to poor sleep.
Top set intensity reduced from 80% to 75% for the session. Back squat substituted by front squat to reduce hip loading.
Client reports session RPE ~8.

Pain level during flare up was 3/10 at rest, reduced from 5/10 at rest 8 weeks ago. Improvement suggests current exercise management is appropriate.

Plan
Review during next session (2 days)
Continue to track R hip pain, aiming for ~3/10 pain or less 24 hours post training and 1/10 48 hrs post.
If pain continues to be elevated, reduce hip loading in training.

As you can see, only tracking objective data in a spreadsheet would omit a significant amount of context and information. The interpretation of objective data will occur through your own subjective lens, probably remembering (vaguely) some of the subjective information, but it's not there on paper.

To be clear, I don't think this is format/detail is worth it for most lifters but may be worth it for some lifters at least some of the time (e.g. collaborating with a healthcare professional regarding an injury).

In a medical/healthcare setting, this is a legal document and so needs to be sufficiently detailed (e.g. if you get audited and have to show evidence of proper practice/no malpractice). This is especially true for patients with more sensitive/easily aggravated conditions.

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There's use for objective data gathering for various things, but understanding what metrics correlate to what outcomes, how strongly they do, and why/*when* they do or don't is important for understanding them.

It's very useful for research and for teams, but on an individual coaching level, I often find it's not worth it other than a surface level, especially as (for myself at least), the data tends not to show anything that I haven't learned from talking to my lifters.

Focusing on the artform of coaching and trying to really understand and remember the person behind the athlete is IMO much more important, as trite as it sounds.

[Elle]

Thank you for your answer!

I agree with you when you say that the athlete is more important than the numbers and that he/she must be at the center of the evaluation to draw up a program.

Collecting data consumes time, but now there are technologies (like Excel) that if used well I believe can be of considerable help. Of course, you need to set them up so that the workflow is as natural as possible.

The best would be to have something capable of shaping itself "autonomously" based on the athlete's condition: ok, did you not sleep much? Reduce this and this by 5% and change this to this. The coach would always have the final word (to mantein that "coaching art") but he would be a nice support, capable of automatically recording the RPE of a session in certain conditions and re-proposing it, modified, when those conditions recur.

Yep, this sure seems to be Weightlifting AI!