The 3 As of strength & conditioning program monitoring:
Attendance
Adherence
Adaptation
Often in S&C we jump to monitor Adaptation first.
Is the athlete getting bigger/faster/stronger....
but what value is there in this if we don't know if our program is contributing to any such improvements?
Start with the basics:
Attendance:
Is the athlete showing up?
How many sessions have they completed?
Are they actively engaged in your program?
A simple attendance monitoring is the place to start. If we establish that they are showing up, then we can next look at what they are actually doing.
Adherence:
Is the athlete completing the program as prescribed? How often are they adapting the program?
Here we can track % of adapted sessions, volume loads, relative intensities, velocity zones, etc.
If we don't know that they are completing or adhering to the program, there's little reason to look at the adaptive response.
Adaptation:
Are we moving the needle on performance?
Are we achieving our program goals?
Once we have a picture of attendance & adherence, it is only then that we should dig into the sexy stuff of adaptation.
Exact metrics will be specific to the athlete & the context. These can range across jump testing, strength diagnostics, 1RM testing or L/V profiling.
However until we've established attendance and adherence there's an element of "cart before the horse" if we start with adaptation-led monitoring.
Good systems have all 3 and build from the ground up.