Interactive GuideTraining loadSpreadsheetAthlete monitoring

Athlete Monitoring Excel Template (Free + When to Stop)

A free athlete monitoring Excel template with the sRPE, ACWR, and monotony formulas built in, plus the clear signs it is time to stop using a spreadsheet.

Start here

What a good athlete monitoring spreadsheet actually tracks

Most coaches at small and medium clubs start training load monitoring in an Excel or Google Sheets spreadsheet. That is the right place to start. The trick is tracking the few columns that turn raw numbers into a decision.

Quick answer

A useful athlete monitoring Excel template needs five things per athlete per day: session duration, RPE on a 0 to 10 scale, session load (RPE multiplied by minutes), a rolling 7-day and 28-day load total for ACWR, and a weekly wellness check. Everything else is decoration. You can run a whole season on those five columns before a spreadsheet starts costing you more time than it saves.

The point of a training load spreadsheet is not to store numbers. It is to answer one question each week: who jumped harder than their body is ready for? To answer it you need session load, a recent baseline, and enough wellness context to tell a real spike from a normal match week. Start with session RPE because it needs no hardware and takes athletes ten seconds to report.

Columns that matter

Duration, RPE, session load, rolling load for ACWR, weekly wellness.

0 to 10

RPE scale

The CR10 scale is the standard for session-RPE internal load.

Column	What it holds	Why it earns its place
Date and session type	Training, match, or off day.	Lets you read load against the football week, not in a vacuum.
Duration (min)	Minutes the athlete actually worked.	Half of the session-load calculation.
RPE (0 to 10)	Athlete's rating of perceived exertion.	The other half of session load, and free to collect.
Session load (AU)	RPE multiplied by minutes.	The single number you sum, average, and trend.
Rolling 7d and 28d load	Acute and chronic totals per athlete.	Feeds ACWR, monotony, and strain.
Weekly wellness	Sleep, soreness, mood, fatigue.	Stops you reading a load spike with no context.

The maths

The four formulas your spreadsheet needs

These are the calculations that make a training load spreadsheet worth keeping. Build them once and the sheet does the arithmetic for you.

Session load (sRPE)

Session load = RPE multiplied by session duration in minutes. The result is in arbitrary units (AU).

Example: A 75-minute session at RPE 6 equals 450 AU.

ACWR

Acute:chronic workload ratio = the rolling 7-day load divided by the rolling 28-day average load, read on the same weekly scale.

Example: 2,100 AU acute over a 1,900 AU chronic base gives an ACWR near 1.1.

Monotony

Weekly monotony = the mean daily load for the week divided by the standard deviation of daily load. High monotony means every day looks the same.

Example: A week with no easy days and no hard days pushes monotony up, even at moderate total load.

Strain

Weekly strain = total weekly load multiplied by monotony. It flags weeks that are both heavy and flat.

Example: High volume with high monotony produces the strain weeks worth watching.

ACWR is a warning light, not a verdict. A high ratio tells you load jumped relative to recent exposure. It does not predict an injury on its own, so read it next to wellness and match minutes. The full method, including the football match-week example, is in the ACWR guide. For the flat-week problem, the monotony and strain guide shows how to vary daily load on purpose.

Session-RPE as RPE multiplied by duration follows Foster's method for quantifying internal training load. ACWR thresholds are commonly cited around 0.8 to 1.3 as a stable zone, but the ranges are contested in the literature. Treat them as a guide for conversation, not a hard rule.

Free download

Get the free athlete monitoring template

We built a starter spreadsheet with the columns and formulas above already wired up: session load, rolling 7-day and 28-day totals, ACWR, monotony, and strain per athlete.

What is in the template

One row per athlete per session, with duration and RPE inputs.
Session load that calculates itself from RPE and minutes.
Rolling 7-day acute and 28-day chronic load per athlete.
Auto ACWR, monotony, and strain columns.
A weekly wellness tab to read load with context.
A short instructions tab so any staff member can keep it going.

How to use it in week one

Set up your squad in the athlete tab, collect RPE after each session, and review the load and wellness columns for fifteen minutes every week. The habit matters more than the tooling.

Get the free template by email

Tell us where to send it and we will email you the athlete monitoring spreadsheet with the formulas built in.

Send me the template

The ceiling

When to stop using the spreadsheet

A spreadsheet is a great start and a poor finish. These are the moments where it quietly starts costing you more time and more risk than it saves.

Signs the spreadsheet has hit its limit

You chase athletes for RPE and type it in by hand every day.
Compliance is a guess because you cannot see who skipped a check.
A dragged formula breaks the ACWR column and nobody notices for a week.
Two staff edit the same file and overwrite each other.
You manage more than one team and the tabs multiply.
Nothing alerts you to a spike; you only find it if you go looking.

None of these mean the spreadsheet was wrong. They mean you outgrew it. The failure mode is rarely a dramatic crash. It is the slow drift where data entry eats the time you meant to spend coaching, and the one spike you needed to catch sits in a row you never scrolled to.

The honest test

If you spend more time feeding the spreadsheet than acting on what it tells you, the spreadsheet is now the problem it was meant to solve.

Job to be done	Spreadsheet	Fractall
Collecting RPE and wellness	Manual entry, or you type in what athletes send you.	Athletes self-log on their phone in seconds.
Tracking compliance	Invisible unless you build it yourself.	See who logged and who skipped at a glance.
Calculating ACWR, monotony, strain	Formulas you maintain and that break when dragged.	Calculated automatically and kept consistent.
Spotting a spike	Only if you scroll to the right row.	Surfaced on the dashboard for review.
Running multiple teams	More tabs, more files, more drift.	Teams kept separate in one place.

Next step

How to move off the spreadsheet without losing your method

Switching tools should not mean throwing away the way you already work. The goal is to keep your method and drop the manual labour around it.

A clean migration in a week

Add your squad and teams once, then have athletes log RPE and wellness from their phones.

Let the platform calculate session load, ACWR, monotony, and strain instead of your formulas.

Review the same weekly signals you trust now, with compliance and spikes already surfaced.

Fractall training load dashboard showing per-athlete load trends, ACWR, and spikes. — The same numbers your spreadsheet produces, calculated for you and read at a glance.

1
Keep your scale
Fractall uses the same 0 to 10 session-RPE method, so your historical thinking still applies.
2
Stop the data entry
Athletes log directly, which removes the daily typing that made the spreadsheet a chore.
3
Start small
No hardware, setup in minutes, and a 4-week free trial on one team before you commit.

See how Fractall replaces the spreadsheet

Fractall collects RPE and wellness from athletes, then calculates load, ACWR, monotony, and strain automatically. No hardware, setup in minutes.

Explore RPE and load monitoring

FAQs

Athlete monitoring spreadsheet questions coaches ask

Practical answers for coaches deciding whether to build, download, or move on from a spreadsheet.

Is the athlete monitoring template free?

Yes. The starter spreadsheet is free. Tell us where to send it and we will email it to you.

Example: It includes session load, rolling 7-day and 28-day load, ACWR, monotony, and strain.

Do I need GPS or hardware for this?

No. The whole template runs on session RPE and duration, which any club can collect with no equipment.

Example: GPS can become a second layer later if you want external load too.

Can I track ACWR in Excel?

Yes, with rolling 7-day and 28-day load columns dividing acute by chronic. The catch is keeping the formulas intact as the sheet grows.

Example: Dragged or copied formulas are the most common reason an ACWR column quietly breaks.

When is software worth it over a spreadsheet?

When manual entry, compliance gaps, broken formulas, or multiple teams cost you more time than the data saves. That is usually past 20 to 30 athletes or more than one team.

Example: If you spend more time feeding the sheet than acting on it, it is time.

Try the spreadsheet's replacement free

Run one team on Fractall for four weeks. Collect RPE and wellness, see ACWR and strain calculated for you, and decide with your own data.

Start the free trial

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Best Athlete Load Monitoring Tools (2026)

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Athlete Monitoring Software for Small Clubs (2026 Guide)

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ACWR in Football: How to Use It Safely and Effectively

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