Together with a degree in Sports and Physical Activity Sciences, he also holds a Master’s degree in Sports Performance: Technification and High Level and a Master’s in High Performance Group Sports. Currently, he’s studying the doctorate program at the UB and an undergraduate major in Applied Data Science at the UOC. He was a trainer in the lower categories for Bàsquet Manresa and their second team, and in the lower categories at FC Barcelona. Currently he’s in charge of load management in indoor sports for FC Barcelona and he’s an undergraduate and graduate-school professor in Sports and Physical Sciences (Twitter: @XaviReche; LinkedIn: Xavi Reche Royo)
“La gestió i l’ús de les dades del control de la càrrega al Futbol Club Barcelona” [Management and use of load control data at Fútbol Club Barcelona]
Load management proves to be a very important subject in the sports world. If managed properly, it allows us to help the athlete and the team to train better and to compete with the best physical abilities possible, as well as reducing the chances of players getting hurt. At FC Barcelona it is primarily focused on group sports, where in order to achieve success, they need to have a tactical and technical output based on physical performance. This means that, even if the athlete is not at the maximum levels or in the best condition, they can achieve superior sports performance. With this program, achieving the best possible condition lets the athlete correct deficiencies in some other important aspects of the game. For this reason, it’s important to have the player’s information in regards to the team they play with, and more importantly, how what they do affects them. At a club like FC Barcelona, we have to have the best recordkeeping tools available, typically from different businesses that report the data, each in their own way. These data has to go through a security filter, an ETL process and have to be used to create information that is useful to the people involved in sports performance improvement.