Tired or overworked? How coaches tell the difference

A few dropped passes at practice or a sluggish sprint time could be the result of a self-inflicted late night or signs an athlete is being overworked.

Spotting the difference could be crucial for what happened next.

New Zealand Breakers chief executive officer Lisa Edser wanted to know - scientifically - if a player was just complaining about being tired or if the data showed that their body was really fatigued.

Edser was not a basketball aficionado in the same way others at the NBL club were but she did take an interest in player welfare.

Sending some of the tallest professional athletes in the country on a tour of the United States for exhibition matches as an interlude to a jam-packed trans-Tasman season raised some questions.

The New Zealand Breakers tipped off their 2024-25 NBL season in Perth, more than 5000 kilometres away from their home base. Returned to Auckland for a week for a Sunday game - when sickness struck the roster - and then jetted off to Utah.

Once they landed in the southwest the Breakers played three games against NBA sides in seven days in three different American cities - Salt Lake City, Philadelphia and Oklahoma.

As soon as the game against the Oklahoma City Thunder was over the Breakers flew on to Brisbane for the first game of a double header NBL round which ended with a Saturday afternoon game on their home court.

The players collective required they travel business class but jet lag could hit regardless of where you sit in the plane.

A travel-heavy schedule was part of the deal for a Breakers player. Half the season was spent in Australia and some cities (like Wollongong and Launceston) were not a direct flight away from Auckland.

Throw in five games in different regions of New Zealand this season and the playing roster would barely unpack their travel bags for a six-month stretch.

Which was where the new head of performance at the Breakers Shane Connolly's experience was crucial.

"So we can truly see does [travel] effect performance or is it a mental game," Edser said.

"Because if it is adversely effecting the athlete performance that's a whole different kettle of fish to just saying ugh I don't want to travel."

Connolly had a background working with the NBA Global Academy and a masters degree in kinesiology and he changed the way the Breakers monitored players' health and injury prevention.

With several tools at his disposal to track players' performance Connolly helped the coaches to get the right balance for player workload.

"You go through this whole road trip and you think about all the physical components, but man, we were on the road for three weeks. Traveled over 21,000 miles (33,796 km) in terms of what our air travel was and just to put that in perspective an NBA team in their biggest months travels 10,000 miles in a month, and we did 21,000 in about 20 days," Connolly said.

"So a big piece to what we were trying to do was to was to keep their minds fresh anytime we could give them, even if it was half a day to just be to themselves, where we weren't throwing messages at them and asking them to be somewhere, or do something so that when we did have our training session and it was a really important block of time that they were locked in."

Breakers players were this season regularly monitored by filling out a questionnaire as well as via physical benchmarks.

"It's eight questions, and it's four for physical, four mental, emotional and gives us a snapshot in terms of how they report they're feeling," Connolly said.

"And then after that, they get on the Force Plate, and we do three counter movement jumps with their hands on their hips, and that just becomes a really consistent measure week over week and when you put those two things together, both in terms of how they report and then what we see on the Force Plate, it kind of gives us a picture as to what the athlete is feeling like heading into the training week in the games"

The effects of the stateside trip this month still lingered more than a week after those games were over, according to Connolly

"To be completely honest, they're still recovering maybe from that big travel schedule, in terms of how they feel, but in terms of how they jumped, and what we can see objectively, they're really at a pretty good place."

The Breakers lost their first game back in the NBL after the American break, won the second game of the double header, lost again and then won again to be sitting in third place on the table, heading into round seven with a four win two loss record.

Connolly's approach to managing player performance was to let the players take the lead - sometimes.

He did not want to treat the athletes "like kids" instead he wanted to maximise the habits the playing group already had.

"Giving them autonomy and then within their autonomy trying to create some foundations for them in terms of how we want to operate as a group."

Connolly was not going to take away a player's favourite warm up or dictate when they set their alarm clock when they were on the road but he would hold players accountable.

When it came to diet while they travelled Connolly said it was a challenge to to cater for "a wide variety of palates" but he was open minded about changing menu items within reason.

"Not that I change the staples of the food because there is a specific reason we're choosing certain meals at certain times but if I'm getting feedback from individuals in terms of they'd like a bit more of this or this because of this or this I can sort of facilitate that as long as they're up front with me and they share that feedback in a proactive, positive way."

Flexibility was key during an eight-week period, that despite having already played a couple of NBL games, Connolly said they approached it like a pre-season block.

"We didn't say we're always training at nine we really looked at the schedule and we thought, okay, where are they going to be able to maximise their sleep? Where are we going to be able to let them sleep in when we land here? What are we going to be feeling like? And some days we trained at nine, some days we trained at three and I think what that allowed was it kept the players minds fresh which is really important.

"The return to the NBL was always on the radar so every decision we made was how is this going to impact what we do when we come back for the NBL it wasn't just the game against Philadelphia or the game against Oklahoma City and so we practised on game days.

"We used our shootaround time to basically consolidate our high training load day and we put a short practice session on the same day as the game because we knew that our big minutes guys were going to have a big training day anyway in terms of what they were doing on court so we wanted to create 24 hours where most our stress was accumulated there so that the 24 hours prior and the 24 hours after we were able to utilise that a little bit more for recovery."

Travel within a similar time zone simplified Connolly's job significantly.

"Any time that you're travelling west it's actually easier in terms of adjusting to the time at a high level than travelling east is a little bit harder so when we go to Australia or when we stay in New Zealand definitely much easier in terms of managing that.

"We don't ask the players to go to bed at a very specific time but we do ask them to about three days ahead of time to start shifting by 30 to 60 minutes what their normal bedtime routine is so we don't ask them to change their routine if they're normally an 11pm guy three days ahead of time you can start shifting that time towards 9.30 it doesn't mean you'll fall asleep by 9.30 but it means you'll be in a slightly better place when we land."

Wake up times were the athletes responsibility - they just had to be ready for training regardless of when they rolled out of bed.

"If somebody wakes up late we do have to have certain things in place to make sure that they're switched on...there are certain things we do before every training session to keep it consistent whether or not we're here or on the road."

Connolly believed the Breakers survived the long-haul start to the season well.

"Not only are the players new the staff is quite new and we're going to have some bumps in the road in terms of not every practice session is going to be perfect not every travel day is going to be perfect but what I think the players feel is that they have a staff that is really supportive of them."

The Breakers were the last remaining NBL side who took part in the NBA games this month.