Beyond the Deck: How Curiosity Changed Sailing’s Performance Analysis

When the NSWIS Sailing Program approached the Institute’s Head of Movement Science, Tamara Martens, with a performance analysis challenge, she drew on her curiosity and expertise to develop two purpose-built platforms –The Rinser and SailWatch – designed to change the way coaches capture, store and review performance information.

NSWIS: What role does science play in high performance sport, particularly in sailing?

Tamara Martens [TM]: In sailing, we have a breadth of practitioners that support sailing and the sports sciences. We’ve got coaches, physiologists and then me as the performance analyst. Our roles range from keeping athletes physically ready and capable of performing, to my role, which is more on skill progression and tactical and strategic analysis of how they’re performing on the water.

NSWIS: What makes sailing such a technically complex sport for performance analysis?

TM: The sailing environment is probably one of the most challenging environments I’ve worked with in terms of capturing video footage. You’ve got athletes that are in boats on a moving surface, with coaches who are following them, trying to capture skill-based information whilst they’re controlling their own boat in often rough conditions. They have to not only steer the boat, but observe their athletes, and at the same time they’re trying to record footage and contextual information around what their athletes are doing, to provide them some feedback and hopefully help them improve their skills on the water.

NSWIS: How did the idea of The Rinser first take root, and what was the problem you were trying to solve?

TM: Anything that we’re approached with by a sport to help solve a problem always starts with the sport first. I never set out to develop any sort of platform – that definitely was not my brief. I spent a lot of time with the sport, understanding what they were currently doing and where the gaps were. They wanted a skill-based video library where they could find examples of people executing sailing skills exceptionally well, compare those with footage of their own athletes, and help athletes see where they needed to progress. They also wanted to retain coaching notes and prompts alongside that footage. When I first met with sailing, it was clear that video was really important to them. They were taking a lot of video – that wasn’t the problem, but they had no management system of how to store that video, retain its context and the coaching knowledge that they wanted alongside that video. They also needed to be able to easily search, filter, and bring up the examples they wanted when they needed them

NSWIS: So, you started experimenting with your own solution?

TM: I looked at more traditional methods, products that are off the shelf, products that manage video – but in the way that we needed, it was going to be overly complicated, really time consuming, open to a lot of error. [I thought,] “Well, everything seems to be overly complicated, too hard for the coach to engage with. So why don’t I try and build something myself?” And I started building a prototype and found out that it was quite simple to do. The key for me was not only about delivering what the coaches wanted but delivering it in a way that they were actually going to practically be able to engage with and use. Because if it was going to be overly complicated or complex, they just weren’t going to engage in it. That’s where the idea came about for The Rinser, which originally was just a library.

NSWIS: How do The Rinser and Sail Watch work together?

TM: [With The Rinser,] you are able to collect footage and retain the context of who the athlete is under, the conditions they were performing in, the skill focus area, how well they were executing that skill, and other coaching notes. It’s a one-stop shop for coaches to put in that information and attach it to the video. It gets stored and organised right from that platform, so they don’t have to worry about it. The next step was, “Well, how do we bring that to life?” That’s when I built SailWatch. Coaches can use SailWatch to filter for a particular athlete or skill. They can even filter skills based on the level of execution, for example, you can look at a podium level execution of a skill versus someone that is still developing that skill and make those comparisons. You can also track how an athlete’s progression over time. If you’ve captured video footage six months ago, you can assess where they were then and how much they’ve progressed in that time. The concept was to try and bring these two things together in the simplest way possible, in a format that didn’t require a lot of steps, naming conventions, or management of storage themselves. The focus was not necessarily the platform itself, but the ease of use and the practicality of the coaches being able to use that within their environment, which becomes really important in applied sports science. It’s not just the end result, but how you’re able to contribute to that continually.

NSWIS: What challenges did you encounter along the way?

TM: You have to be really creative. I’ve been a performance analyst for 18 years, and I found one of the most difficult tasks when I met with Sailing was mounting cameras on boats. There are many different types of boats, and a camera mount that you would have on one particular vessel would not work the same as it would on another vessel. I never thought I would have that much difficulty just being able to set up cameras within a sporting environment! It was a good learning process. We also had to refine their video capture process. [Coaches] are capturing footage on a moving vessel by themselves, whilst trying to watch athletes and control the camera, so it became, “How do we reduce the need for them to have all things operating at once?” We introduced a tagging window on an iPad where coaches can select buttons while running a camera continuously. So, it still clips the video, but they’re not at risk of missing any key information. The next challenge was getting data in a consistent manner. Even things like date conventions and consistently naming athletes and skills become really important when the end goal is being able to search for information and identify trends.

NSWIS: Did developing something new require a leap of faith?

TM: The risk was that I wasn’t sure if I knew how to do this, so it was having the confidence to explore something new. It was having confidence in knowing my knowledge that I’ve gained over the years to say, “Look, I do know a solution. I don’t think it’s the most effective solution at the moment. So, I’m going to try and build something better for you.” You need that confidence to lean into learning something new and into the new technologies around us that can help improve our capability. You need that confidence and that experience to actually take that leap.
Fortunately, it’s turned out quite well, which means I can apply it to other sports now too!

NSWIS: How important was collaboration throughout the project?

TM: The people I collaborated most with were the coaches as the end users. It was very much about putting the information they required in their hands in a time frame that was going to be useful to them. They were my key collaborators, from how we name and classify skills, to how we describe the wind and sea conditions. The tool had to be very much within their language, and hopefully that will remain consistent across all coaches that work with Sailing. So, any new coaches that come in and join the program will be confident and familiar with that terminology. There’s sustainability there. I think the legacy is really important.

NSWIS: What impact has The Rinser had so far – and where could it go next?

TM: I released The Rinser in February this year and the coaches were very excited by it. We’ve got about 50 videos uploaded in there at the moment, where they’ve captured skills and added context. The feedback so far has been really good. Now they understand the purpose of The Rinser, and they’re seeing the value that Sail Watch has for them to be able to review their athletes quickly. The next step is to really embed it as part of the culture in Sailing and coaching practice. We’re meeting with coaches regularly, taking them through training and encouraging them to upload as much video as possible. The more video we have in there, the greater source of knowledge we have and context that we can lean on at a later date. In a couple of years, I would expect it to be a really rich source for tracking athlete progression. Hopefully it will be a tool that our other performance support staff can use as well, and eventually, be adapted for other sports.

NSWIS: What advice would you give students and early-career practitioners about following their curiosity and developing new ideas?

TM: I think students and anyone these days have access to a lot more information. Everyone’s got a phone with a camera on it so you can film performance. When I was growing up, I never saw myself perform in sport. Now, everyone’s got their wearables – their Garmins and Apple Watches that bring through a wealth of health and physical information. It tells you how far you’re walking, how fast you’re moving. All those sorts of things are readily available. My advice would be getting hands-on practice anywhere you can get experience and exposure. So, the internships and the volunteer work that you do all counts. That exposure is so important because at the end of the day, it’s the relationships you make with coaches and understanding that particularly in movement science, we work more closely with the coaches, and how we can actually help assist them, to then help their athletes improve. So, relationships are really key.

Rachel Tingey, NSWIS