Case Study – Isle of Man Sport

Isle of Man Sport acts as an independent forum for the promotion & development of sports and recreation. It provides advice and expertise to the Department of Education, Sport and Culture on all matters pertaining to sports and recreation on the Island. Isle of Man Sport also identifies and develops athletes at all levels, from juniors to elite competitors.

The Isle of Man, an island in the Irish Sea, only has a population of 85,000. But it punches well above its weight on the world sporting stage. In the past few years, Manx athletes have included Sir Mark Cavendish, who holds the record for the most stages won at the Tour de France, and Olympic gold medalists Georgia Taylor-Brown (triathlon) and Peter Kennaugh (cycling).

The Isle of Man has also produced promising young competitors, including world top 100 tennis player Billy Harris, Olympic equestrian rider Yasmin Ingham, UK CrossFit champion Aimee Cringle, European motocross silver medalist Kaytlyn Adshead, and ultra-athletes Sarah Webster and Nikki Arthur.

To nurture such athletes, Isle of Man Sport created a development pipeline with five stages. Coordinating their training as they progressed used to be difficult, as strength and conditioning coaches and other professionals recorded workouts with paper and pen, and there was no good way for athletes to report their health status. Paul Jones, performance coordinator at Isle of Man Sport and manager of Isle of Man FC, looked for an athlete management system (AMS) that would facilitate better information sharing via a central platform. One system clearly stood out.

“We went through a government procurement process and looked at a lot of different athlete management systems,” Jones said.

“Nothing could touch the level of detail and granularity that AthleteMonitoring provides at a low price point. Plus, they were able to help us create a bespoke solution that’s adaptable to our future needs. It was a no brainer.”

Customizing an AMS for 18 Sports

One of the reasons that Jones got up and running quickly with AthleteMonitoring was its usability. He has also been able to tailor it to the exact needs of Isle of Man Sport.

“There are lots of preset functions in AthleteMonitoring that you can crack on with, and then as you learn to use it, you can play around more with the settings,” he said. “That’s great for me because I want things to be editable and customizable. You don’t need to be overly technical to make it work well.”
Some of this customization involves applying real-time surveillance to athletes in 18 different sports. Certain governing bodies utilize AthleteMonitoring for this in a single discipline, while others like the Swedish Olympic Committee apply it across many. Isle of Man Sport has followed this second approach because the platform is versatile enough to be tailored to individual needs while also collecting standardized data.

“We’ve got just under a hundred athletes in AthleteMonitoring, plus another 80 young people in a lower part of our pathway,” Jones said. “Now I know most of what’s going on, without relying on bumping into someone who might share information with me. As long as our athletes and staff are communicating well, we can all stay up to speed on how each person is doing. We’ve got our fingers on the pulse from a systemic standpoint and can also zoom in to take a look at any individual. That makes my life a lot easier.”

Improving Communication with Secure Athlete-Coach Messaging

In addition to having a large number of athletes spread across many sports, they’re also based in multiple locations. “Young athletes live in different parts of our island and elite ones train and compete all over the world,” Jones said. “We wanted a way to keep in touch and make sure everyone stays on track of training data and any other information their team feels it’s important to track.”

The solution was to implement the secure messaging function in AthleteMonitoring. It enables every member of the team around each athlete to view current and complete data. This facilitates a multidisciplinary approach around a reliable single source of truth.

“A lot of our athletes are young people who very rarely use email,” Jones said. “We wanted a system within an app for secure messaging that met HIPAA and GDPR compliance. AthleteMonitoring gives us that, and allows us to bring a sports coach, physio, S&C coach, and performance psychologist together in one place without having to create big email chains. Now we can communicate with all our athletes in the development pathway and share documents with them and their team in a timely manner. We’re giving them the best support we can.”

Once AthleteMonitoring solved Jones’s biggest daily challenges – communication and information sharing – he soon realized that it also had other useful capabilities. These would give Isle of Man Sport quantitative and qualitative insights into their athletes’ progress.

“The added bonus is the training data, periodization monitoring, wellness checks, and psychological wellbeing questionnaires we do every month,” Jones said. “We use AthleteMonitoring for gym training design, RPEs, and velocity-based training with different sensors.”

Supporting Mental + Physical Health Worldwide

As Isle of Man athletes progress along their development pathway, they often start training and competing overseas. It’s all too easy for there to be a disconnect between them and their homeland, and for Jones and his colleagues to become separated from coaching groups in different sports.

“The athletes we’re tracking training for put their reps and sets into the AthleteMonitoring app, give us their RPE, and leave notes about how it felt,” Jones said. “If they’re in the States or Australia, their coaches can then adjust training for the next day. When they wake up, they’ve got a slightly tailored program based on their response to the previous day. And getting a survey from us about their health or mental state lets them know that we still care and want to stay connected. We often support them with information that their team or governing body doesn’t know.”

In addition to collecting and sharing hard data, AthleteMonitoring enables Isle of Man Sport to gather subjective information on each athlete’s mental health and progress toward their goals.

“Our surveys give us the chance to check in with our athletes no matter where they are and make sure they’re doing OK,” Jones said. “We’ve created a questionnaire that we use for quarterly athlete reviews. It helps identify actual and perceived progress and keep them active in our performance pathway for longer. We want to help them build skills, set and review goals, and be accountable. We’ve also modified a standard POMS questionnaire to assess their mood. It’s helping us be proactive in our care and clinical support, and the athlete response rate is fantastic.”

Uniting Performance and Medical Data

In many sports organizations, performance information is stored in one system and medical data in another. These silos make it difficult for professionals in various roles to coordinate an athlete’s training and treatment efficiently. With an optional Electronic Health Record (EHR) module,

AthleteMonitoring provides a single, central repository for both and keeps athletes’ private data safe in accordance with GDPR and other security standards.

“We use AthleteMonitoring for medical notes,” Jones said. “Before, it was challenging to ensure we had these for all the athletes in our pathway, as they were on a government server. How could we communicate personally sensitive medical information using a central hub in a safe and secure way? AthleteMonitoring solved that problem, and that area is locked down so only physios and doctors can access it.”

While the clinicians who Jones mentioned can upload, search for, and retrieve a specific athlete’s health records, he and other authorized Isle of Man Sport users can see a health status summary. This helps get everyone on the same page when trying to progress through the continuum of care until they’re cleared to resume normal activities. There is also an audit trail to see which actions were taken and when a staff member interacted with an athlete.

“Once a doctor or physio writes their HIPAA-compliant SOAP notes in AthleteMonitoring, they can add treatment plans,” Jones said. “They can then share their status and when they’re likely to return to training with the whole group. That has made our governance process far more robust.”

Another way that an AMS can improve athletes’ overall wellbeing is to monitor their recovery and readiness. Jones and his colleagues combine objective assessments, data points like heart rate variability (HRV), and subjective questionnaires that can be completed in seconds from a phone or tablet. This enables Isle of Man Sport to be proactive, identify potential issues in advances, and intervene before a small problem becomes a big one.

“We do testing before gym sessions – including countermovement jumps – to see how well each athlete has recovered,” Jones said. “Once they get used to that, then we start rolling out a questionnaire two or three times a week through AthleteMonitoring. With that and HRV tracking, there are early warning signs so we can spot an injury, overload, or illness. If a teenager doesn’t listen to us, it provides an opportunity to go back, look at the data with them, and see patterns in the data before they got a muscle strain or a fever.”

Building Stronger Athlete Relationships

As much potential as it has to be a preventative measure, consistently gathering, consolidating, and visualizing each athlete’s data provides a conversation starter for Jones with young athletes in the Isle of Man’s performance pathway. The goal isn’t quick results, but sustainable, long-term development of the next Mark Cavendish or Georgia Taylor-Brown. Such a responsible, gradual approach is one reason that the island has far more Olympians, world champions, and elite competitors than is projected for such a small community.

“The great thing with AthleteMonitoring is that you have data that you can talk about and help young athletes to understand why some things are important,” Jones said. “It’s a really good way to educate them when things don’t go the way they wanted them to. Now there’s a learning opportunity, they embed better behaviors going forward, and they become more self-reliant. We’re building stronger relationships with our athletes and showing them that we’re going to deliver what we promised.”

Combining Value and Athlete-Centric Features

When asked why he continues recommending AthleteMonitoring to peers in similar roles, Jones said, “AthleteMonitoring is affordable and does everything you need it to do without it being too flashy,” Jones said. “You can gather solid data on the athletes you work with in easy-to-use software. By combining our community-driven activities with better and more timely information sharing, we’ll continue to produce and develop world-class athletes.”

Another reason Isle of Man Sport continues to extend the reach of AthleteMonitoring is the responsive support Jones receives anytime he reaches out.

“If there’s ever an issue, it’s always solved quickly and in a very personable way,” he said. “I never feel lost like I have with some other big vendors, and the AthleteMonitoring team genuinely cares about us and our success with their product. They’re very open to suggestions for new features and always make me feel like they’re here to help.”

Quick Facts

Location: Isle of Man
Number of sports using AthleteMonitoring: 18
Main uses: Performance tracking, health monitoring, and athlete development
Athletes managed: 180