September 20, 2023
Coach Cody Hughes, Director of Human Performance at Madison Academy, in Madison, Alabama, was spending inordinate amounts of time developing Excel and Google spreadsheets to aggregate his players’ performance and strength and conditioning data.
Fortunately for Coach Hughes, a fellow coach recommended the RockDaisy Athlete Management System (AMS) to streamline data management and visualization. Coach Hughes was adding Velocity Based Training (VBT), ForceDecks, and laser timing systems into his repertoire, so he simply didn’t have the bandwidth to continue using Excel and Google Sheets exclusively.
“If I can’t analyze the data, have it clearly visualized and have the right people see it, I need to find another way. Because the ROI just isn’t there for me to do it manually.”
— Coach Cody Hughes, Director of Human Performance at Madison Academy
A Sense of Purpose
Coach Hughes credits RockDaisy with making it easy to document athlete progress in regard to weight training, session completions, cardio performance, and other key metrics.
“In terms of variables for athletes at the high school level, the performance range is more variable than at any other level. So being able to see what’s going on, on a weekly, quarterly, semesterly, and yearly basis, is invaluable.”
— Coach Cody Hughes
RockDaisy helps Coach Hughes efficiently surface contextual data – timeframes, rosters, averages, standard deviations — all it takes is a couple of clicks. For example, if an athlete is trending negatively over certain data points, it could imply a fatigue state or that they are deconditioned. Those are two separate things. With RockDaisy, Coach Hughes can correlate the negative data with other variables (like sleep patterns or eating habits) to determine the causal relationship, and in turn address the source of the athlete’s problem.
“Data is cool, but it can get very muddy if you don’t have the context that goes with it” explains Coach Hughes. RockDaisy has become an invaluable tool for helping him place data points in the correct Context.
Coach Hughes talks openly about defending his job as a head football coach. “You need to be able to defend yourself in the strength and conditioning world. If an athlete is not getting results and/or not participating, RockDaisy makes it super easy to understand why.
For Coach Hughes, that is one of the most important value-adds of the RockDaisy platform — it helps you see progress (or regress) over time, enabling you to jump on small problems before they become larger ones.
One additional unanticipated benefit of using RockDaisy is that the visibility into performance data actually helps with motivating Coach Hughes’ players. “The athletes can view leaderboards and stats—so they can’t hide from the truth. We’re about moving the needle. You need to know where you’re at and where you are going.”
Down the Rabbit Hole…
Coach Hughes has a very specific way he likes to visualize Velocity Based Training (VBT) data (similar to a load velocity profile, but with thresholds to easily identify personal records).
RockDaisy built custom VBT dashboards for Coach Hughes, which automatically display personal records. In a couple of clicks, Coach Hughes can see which other data correlates with those personal records, enabling him to identify what was going on in that athlete’s on-field performance and off-field lifestyle, which helps the athlete to stay at peak performance.
“I told RockDaisy that I am very demanding in terms of what I want to see. And so far, there’s nothing that they haven’t been able to do.”
— Coach Cody Hughes
“I told RockDaisy that I am very demanding in terms of what I want to see. And so far, there’s nothing that they haven’t been able to do,” says Coach Hughes. “It’s only going to grow from here.”
Coach Hughes is still working with the RockDaisy team to customize dashboards. They are currently working on creating specific dashboards for coaches, with certain metrics — body composition, strength, speed, jump ability, and others — which they can check instantly, in order to minimize their time spent in-platform.
“It’s going to save time for coaches to get information and see what is happening,’ Coach Hughes remarks. “If coaches want to see GPS loads, they can go into RockDaisy at any time. They don’t need to rely on me. So that’s already saving time.”
Second-to-None
Whenever adopting a new tech platform, customer service is critically important. Fortunately, RockDaisy prioritizes onboarding and ongoing customer service, to ensure the smoothest possible adoption of their platform.
“Their response time has been tremendous,” lauds Coach Hughes. “They’re willing to hop on calls any time of day. I send emails and get an email back within the hour at the latest. They’re really good about that.”
Coach Hughes loves how the RockDaisy team is willing to solve problems with him right there on the phone. They’ll spend an hour going through different iterations of what Coach Hughes is looking for, making edits right there on the call. Then they schedule a follow-up call to make sure the edits are working as anticipated. “If there’s something that you want, they do it right there with you on the call. It saves everybody a lot of time.”
With RockDaisy, Coach Hughes realized that a sports-specific data visualization platform saves countless hours and headaches, enabling coaches to focus on what matters most—coaching their athletes.
“It took me a minute to realize the power of true software over spreadsheets. I’ve realized the power is exponential, and I won’t go back to the spreadsheets.”
— Coach Cody Hughes
About RockDaisy LLC
Founded in 2014 by the two developers of the NFL’s analytics services. RockDaisy is a New York based company and is proud to be the analytics & visualization platform for a growing number of sports organizations across the NFL, NBA, NHL, NCAA, NAHL, NHSSCA and other elite sports leagues around the world. For more information, visit rockdaisy.com
Contact Information:
Chris Tanck
RockDaisy LLC
info@rockdaisy.com
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