What it is
The Load Monitor is a squad-wide readiness dashboard centered on the acute:chronic workload ratio (ACWR). It reads each player's recent load against their own rolling baseline and sorts the squad into workload zones — underloaded, sweet spot, overreach, or high risk — so the staff can see at a glance who needs pulling back and who has room to push.
When you use it
Use it in the daily planning routine — typically before or after a session — to check the squad's risk picture, spot players trending into the danger zone, and cross-read ACWR against today's wellness and session-RPE. It complements the Calendar (which creates the sessions the load is calculated from) and GPS Analysis (which offers the same engine with deeper per-metric drilldowns).
How it works
Pick the squad and the period. The team selector scopes all data to one category. A segmented control switches the time window: 7d, 28d (default), Microcycle, or Season. Changing it re-scopes the chart, the distribution and every card.
Read the KPI strip. Four cards summarize the squad: average ACWR (with a mini zone bar), number of players in the danger zone, wellness average for today, and average session-RPE over the last seven days.
Read the chart. The main chart plots the squad-average ACWR over time as a line, with daily load drawn as bars behind it, and dashed reference lines at the zone thresholds. Importantly, the squad line is the mean of each player's ACWR, not a single pooled squad ratio — averaging ratios rather than raw loads keeps high-volume players from dominating the number.
Read the distribution and wellness. A donut breaks the squad into sweet-spot / overreach / danger / no-data slices (toggle it to a table if you prefer names and values). A wellness panel shows today's check-in dimensions (Sleep, Mood, Fatigue, Stress, Soreness — or the Hooper index if the club uses it), colored by how favorable each is.
Work the player table. Every player appears with jersey number, position, an ACWR value and bar, session-RPE, wellness, their acute/chronic figures, and a zone pill. You can:
- Filter by zone — All, Danger, Overreach, Sweet-spot, Underloaded.
- Group by Position, Status or Age, and sort by any column (ACWR sorts high-first by default; players with no data always sort last).
- Act on a wellness flag — a flagged row (reported sore area or wellness note) opens a modal where you can Mark as seen or Create a follow-up in Injuries.
Tune the model. Two controls change how ACWR is computed (see Key concepts): a metric selector chooses which load stream feeds the ratio (session-RPE load by default, or a GPS metric), and a model popover toggles EWMA vs Rolling average and Uncoupled vs Coupled chronic windows.
Export. Export the table to CSV (player, position, ACWR, acute and chronic load, zone, last RPE, sessions), and save the chart or distribution as a PNG.
Key concepts
ACWR (acute:chronic workload ratio). A dimensionless ratio of recent load (the acute window, last 7 days) to the player's rolling baseline (the chronic window, last 28 days). It is a flag for how fast load is changing, not a verdict — read it alongside wellness, RPE and medical judgment.
The zones. The Load Monitor uses these boundaries (from the shared ACWR engine):
| Zone | ACWR | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| Underloaded | below 0.8 | Recent load is under baseline — sub-optimal stimulus, detraining risk. |
| Sweet spot | 0.8 – 1.3 | Load is progressing in step with the baseline — the target range. |
| Overreach | 1.3 – 1.5 | Elevated, tolerable short-term (e.g. a loading block or taper) — watch closely. |
| High risk | 1.5 and above | An acute spike — the danger zone; combine with wellness before deciding. |
A player needs at least 4 sessions in the chronic window to get an ACWR; below that they show as "no data" and are left out of the squad average.
EWMA vs Rolling average. The EWMA (exponentially weighted moving average) model is the evidence-based default: it weights recent days more and avoids the artificial "spike" a plain rolling average produces when old sessions drop off the 7-day edge. The Rolling model is the simple mean of the window. The active model is a club-wide setting, so every page that shows ACWR (Load Monitor, GPS Analysis, player dossiers) reads the same number.
Coupled vs uncoupled. By default the windows are uncoupled: the chronic window is days 8–28, excluding the acute 7 days. This stops the recent spike you are trying to detect from also inflating the baseline it is measured against (the methodologically preferred approach). Coupled includes all 28 days in the chronic window.
s-RPE (session RPE) load. The default load stream. For each session, load = RPE (0–10) × duration (minutes), in arbitrary units — an internal, perception-based measure of how hard the session was. The metric selector can swap this for a GPS stream (player load, total distance, high-speed distance, sprint distance, sprints, or accelerations+decelerations) when GPS data is available.
Acute vs chronic load. Acute is the sum of load over the last 7 days — the recent stress. Chronic is the player's rolling baseline over 28 days — the load they are conditioned for. ACWR is simply acute relative to chronic.
FAQ
What ACWR is "good"? The 0.8–1.3 sweet spot is the target. 1.3–1.5 is overreach — acceptable briefly but worth watching. 1.5 and above is the high-risk spike zone. Below 0.8 is underloading.
Why does a player show no ACWR? They have fewer than 4 sessions in the last 28 days, so there isn't enough history for a reliable baseline. They're excluded from the squad average until they cross that threshold.
Which load does ACWR use? Session-RPE load by default (RPE × minutes). Use the metric selector to base it on a GPS stream instead, where GPS data exists.
Why is the squad line an average of ratios? Because averaging each player's ACWR (rather than pooling raw squad load) prevents high-minute players from skewing the team-level picture — it reflects team risk more faithfully.
Where does the load data come from? From training sessions and their RPE entries (and, for GPS metrics, from imported/synced GPS reports). The Calendar creates the sessions; wellness flags link through to Injuries.
Related
- GPS Analysis — the same ACWR engine, plus per-metric and per-player analysis.
- Calendar — where the sessions and planned load originate.