Athlete recovery monitoring spreadsheet

The two mistakes that ruin tracking sheets

The first is typing zero for a missing reading. An athlete who did not wear their device gets a 0, the average collapses, and from then on every ordinary day looks like an improvement while a genuinely poor one looks normal. Blanks must stay blank — this template leaves them empty in the worked example specifically to make that obvious.

The second is comparing athletes to each other. It is the natural thing to do once names are in rows, and it mostly ranks the squad by individual physiology. Resting heart rates and HRV values differ enormously between people who are in identical condition.

Everything else about sheet design is preference. Those two decide whether the data is usable.

What is in the template

Ordered so the daily inputs come first and the optional device numbers after. A coach with no wearables on the roster can stop at the session column and the sheet still works.

Date and athlete

One row per athlete per day. Long format rather than a column per athlete, because it sorts and filters properly once you have a few weeks of it.

Sleep hours and sleep quality

Hours is the most actionable number a coach has. Quality is a 1-5 self-rating, not a device score, so it works for everyone.

Energy, soreness, stress

All 1-5, all oriented so 5 is good. Consistent direction matters more than the scale — a flipped soreness column makes the trend meaningless.

Session context

One short phrase. Almost every flag resolves here, because a drop the day after a heavy session is a different observation from a drop out of nowhere.

Resting HR, HRV, device score — optional

Left blank for athletes without a wearable. Filling them in for some athletes and not others is fine; nothing compares across rows.

Vs their normal

The column that does the work. Not the value, but whether it is lower, about the same, or higher than usual for this person.

Needs attention, and coach note

The output. If a sheet never produces an action, it is a record rather than a monitoring system.

Where a spreadsheet stops being the right tool

Honestly: later than most software companies suggest. For eight or ten athletes a well-kept sheet is genuinely sufficient, it costs nothing, and it is entirely under your control.

What changes is the arithmetic. Working out whether today is unusual for an athlete means holding their recent average in your head, or building formulas per athlete per metric. That is fine for ten athletes and roughly a hundred and fifty comparisons a morning at thirty — which is the point the daily habit quietly stops.

If you enjoy maintaining your own system and your roster is small, keep the sheet. The comparison page linked below sets out the trade honestly rather than pushing you off it.

Not medical information

Frequently asked

Will this open in Google Sheets?

Yes. It is a CSV, so Google Sheets, Excel and Numbers all open it natively. Import it and add whatever formulas or conditional formatting suit you.

Why is there no overall recovery score column?

Because a single composite invites exactly the behaviour the sheet argues against. Averaging subjective ratings into one number implies precision that is not there and hides which input moved, which is the part that determines what you do.

How many athletes can I realistically track this way?

Around ten to fifteen before the daily comparison becomes the bottleneck. It is not the data entry that breaks — it is working out what is unusual for each person, every morning.

Do I need any wearables to use it?

No. The optional device columns can stay empty for the whole roster and the sheet still does its job on self-reported context alone.