ABSTRACT
Athlete monitoring is common practise in high-performance sport. Fundamentally, athlete monitoring involves quantifying the athletes training load and their responses to that training. This chapter examines the training theory that underpins athlete monitoring and discusses the key components of an athlete monitoring system. There are numerous measures, or constructs, of training load that can be measured and used in athlete monitoring. Criteria for a fitness test that can be included in a monitoring system are that it should be valid and reliable, able to accurately reflect training status, cost effective, and easy to implement with minimal disruption to normal training. Athlete fatigue is a difficult concept to define, thus making its precise measurement problematic. Various biochemical markers have also been suggested as useful components of athlete monitoring systems. Understanding the non-linear individual athlete dose-response relationships between training on performance, fitness and fatigue is a major challenge in athlete monitoring. Athlete monitoring systems are common place in high-performance sports.
