Return-to-play ramp rate scenario planner
Problem
A rehab progression plan usually lives in a spreadsheet the physio and strength coach edit together, sketching out how training volume should climb back toward normal over several weeks. The ramp rate is chosen by feel: a bit more this week, hold if the athlete reports soreness. Nobody can see, before the plan is agreed, how a faster ramp compares to a slower one against the athlete's own pre-injury load or the thresholds in the return-to-play protocol. The plan gets signed off in a meeting, then a missed session or a cautious physio note forces it to be renegotiated over a messaging thread, one week at a time, with no record of which options were considered or why one was chosen over another.
Product idea
A planning tool where a physio or strength coach enters the athlete's baseline load history and the milestones in the return-to-play protocol, then builds two or three progression pathways side by side: conservative, standard, accelerated. Each pathway shows the resulting daily and weekly load curve, the acute to chronic ratio it implies, and where it crosses the athlete's own tolerance thresholds, before anyone commits to a return date. Pathways that breach a protocol limit are flagged rather than blocked. The tool does not decide when an athlete is fit to return; that stays a clinical judgement. It exists to make the load consequence of each option visible in the room, so the plan agreed in the meeting is the one actually chosen rather than the first one sketched.
Who it is for
Sports scientists and strength and conditioning coaches building the ramp, in consultation with medical staff, sponsored by the Head of Performance who signs off the return-to-play plan.
Possible first version
A single-athlete planning screen: upload baseline load as a spreadsheet, enter return-to-play milestones by hand, and adjust two or three template pathways by ramp rate. A chart compares projected load against threshold lines set for that athlete. Completed plans export as a PDF for the sign-off meeting. Version one does not pull load data automatically from a GPS platform or athlete management system, does not update as real sessions are logged, and makes no clinical recommendation. It is a planning and comparison tool, not a live tracker.
- Build classification
- Workflow application
- Rough effort
- 4-6 week first release
- Roles involved
- Head of Performance, Sports scientist, Strength & conditioning coach
- Relevant to
- Professional club, Collegiate athletics, Academy & youth, Women's league
- Systems in play
- Spreadsheets, Athlete management systems, Medical and injury records
- Product framing
- Test or simulate
Questions we get asked
What data do we need to have ready before we can try this?
Baseline load history for the athlete, in whatever export format your GPS or athlete management system already produces, and the milestones and thresholds set out in your return-to-play protocol. Version one accepts both as a manual upload rather than a live feed, so a session's worth of historical data is enough to build and compare pathways. Nothing needs to be connected to a live system to see the tool working.
We already plan rehab ramps in a spreadsheet. Why change that?
The spreadsheet is not the problem, the lack of comparison is. Most spreadsheets show one pathway, the one somebody already chose, rather than two or three side by side against the athlete's own thresholds. If your team is already good at building that comparison by hand, this saves time rather than changing the decision. If two people currently argue past each other about ramp rate in a meeting, this gives them a shared chart to argue over instead.
Does this make the return-to-play decision for us?
No. It shows the load consequence of a pathway; it does not judge whether an athlete is clinically fit to return. A pathway that breaches a threshold is flagged, not blocked, because there are legitimate clinical reasons to accept that risk in a given case. The return-to-play decision stays with medical staff. This tool exists to make sure that decision is made with the load picture in front of everyone, not after.
What happens when the athlete's actual sessions stop matching the plan?
Version one does not update automatically. It is a planning tool used before a pathway is agreed, not a live tracker of what actually happened, so once training starts, deviations from the plan are picked up wherever your team already reviews delivered load. A later version could compare planned against delivered inside the same tool. Version one deliberately keeps those separate, so the planning step gets built and proven before that additional data connection is worth taking on.
Is this your workflow?
Tell us one sports workflow that still runs on paper, spreadsheets, WhatsApp or an outdated system. We will map it and show you what a simpler product looks like.
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