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Athlete Wellness Questionnaire for S&C Coaches (Free Form)
Athlete wellness questionnaire for football: the five questions and answers, how to score them, a free Google Form and Sheet, and when to use an app.
Published
Wellness questionnaire
The short answer
Five questions, one scale, and a comparison with the player's own normal.
Quick answer
Use the McLean questionnaire: five questions on fatigue, sleep quality, muscle soreness, stress and mood, each answered from 1 to 5, where 5 is always the best answer. Players answer before training, and the total out of 25 is compared with that player's own previous four weeks. A Google Form is enough to start, and the free Form and Sheet below score it for you.
Below: the questions with every answer written out, how McLean compares with the Hooper index, how to score and flag, what a match week does to the numbers, how to keep players answering, a free Google Form and Sheet, and when a form stops being enough.
The questions
1. The McLean questionnaire: five questions, and 5 is the best answer on every one
The McLean questionnaire, with all 25 answers in text.
The five questions most football staff use come from a study of professional rugby league players (McLean et al. 2010). Each question has five answers, and each answer has a label, so a player picks the description that fits and a 3 means the same thing to everyone. The wording below is the version reproduced in later football studies (Fernandes et al. 2022; Oliveira et al. 2023).
| Question | What the player is asked | Answers, from 5 (best) to 1 |
|---|---|---|
| Fatigue | How fresh do you feel? | 5 Very fresh · 4 Fresh · 3 Normal · 2 More tired than normal · 1 Always tired |
| Sleep quality | How did you sleep last night? | 5 Very restful · 4 Good · 3 Difficulty falling asleep · 2 Restless sleep · 1 Insomnia |
| General muscle soreness | How do your muscles feel? | 5 Feeling great · 4 Feeling good · 3 Normal · 2 Increase in soreness/tightness · 1 Very sore |
| Stress | How stressed do you feel? | 5 Very relaxed · 4 Relaxed · 3 Normal · 2 Feeling stressed · 1 Highly stressed |
| Mood | How is your mood? | 5 Very positive mood · 4 A generally good mood · 3 Less interested in others and/or activities than usual · 2 Snappiness at teammates, family and co-workers · 1 Highly annoyed/irritable/down |
Keep 5 as the best answer on every question, so the total means one thing. Add the five answers and you get a score from 5 to 25. A higher total is always a better morning. Two details are worth knowing before you copy it. On sleep, 3 is "difficulty falling asleep", which is worse than a normal night, so sleep has no neutral middle. And variants are everywhere: a 9-point version, soreness split into upper and lower body, different words for mood.
The common mistake is editing the questions halfway through a season. Every change resets what "normal" means for each player. A survey of practitioners in UK elite sport found home-made versions of these questions everywhere, varied enough to put their validity in doubt (Neupert et al. 2022). Pick a version and keep it.
How the daily check fits with load, injury records and the weekly review is in our athlete wellness monitoring guide.
How much to trust five questions
A systematic review of 56 studies found that athletes' own ratings reflected training load more sensitively and consistently than objective measures (Saw et al. 2016). The catch is that none of these single questions has been formally validated (Jeffries et al. 2020), and in the largest studies their link with training load was trivial to moderate (Duignan et al. 2020). Treat the answers as the player's report of how they feel, and use a low one to start a conversation.
McLean BD et al. (2010), Int J Sports Physiol Perform 5(3):367-83, doi:10.1123/ijspp.5.3.367. Answer wording as reproduced in Fernandes I et al. (2022), Sports 10:192, and Oliveira et al. (2023), PLoS One, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0289374. Neupert E et al. (2022), J Sports Sci, doi:10.1080/02640414.2022.2085435. Saw AE, Main LC, Gastin PB (2016), Br J Sports Med 50(5):281-91, doi:10.1136/bjsports-2015-094758. Jeffries AC et al. (2020), Int J Sports Physiol Perform 15(9):1203-15, doi:10.1123/ijspp.2020-0386. Duignan C et al. (2020), J Athl Train, doi:10.4085/1062-6050-0528.19.
Hooper index
2. McLean questionnaire or Hooper index: pick one, and never mix their scores
The two questionnaires run in opposite directions.
The Hooper index is the other questionnaire you will see in football papers. It comes from work with elite swimmers, where self-reported well-being explained 76% of the variance in staleness scores (Hooper et al. 1995), and from Hooper and Mackinnon's recommendations on monitoring overtraining the same year. It asks four questions on a 7-point scale and adds them up.
| McLean questionnaire | Hooper index | |
|---|---|---|
| Questions | Fatigue, sleep quality, muscle soreness, stress, mood | Sleep, stress, fatigue, muscle soreness |
| Answers per question | 5 (1 to 5) | 7 (1 to 7) |
| Best answer | 5, on every question | Usually 1, but some papers flip sleep so that 7 is best |
| Total | 5 to 25, higher is better | 4 to 28, usually lower is better |
| Origin | McLean et al. 2010, professional rugby league | Hooper et al. 1995, elite swimmers |
The direction is the trap: on the Hooper index a higher total usually means a worse morning. In one football study the scale ran from 1, "very, very good", to 7, "very, very poor", and the index was the sum of the four (Rabbani et al. 2019). Other football papers score sleep the other way round, with 7 as a good night (Fernandes et al. 2021, 2022). Vendor pages add to the confusion with 1 to 10 and 0.5 to 5 versions. If you switch questionnaires, or compare your numbers with a paper, check which way each question runs first. Read a Hooper total as if it were McLean and every flag points the wrong way.
For a daily check on a phone, we would use McLean. Higher is better on every question, there are five answers to read instead of seven, and mood is included. It is also the scale Fractall and our free wellness survey tool use, so a coach who starts on the Google Form keeps the same numbers later. If your staff already run the Hooper index and know its direction, keep it: changing scale mid-season resets every player's baseline.
Hooper SL, Mackinnon LT, Howard A, Gordon RD, Bachmann AW (1995), Med Sci Sports Exerc 27(1):106-12, doi:10.1249/00005768-199501000-00019. Hooper SL, Mackinnon LT (1995), Sports Med 20(5):321-7, doi:10.2165/00007256-199520050-00003. Rabbani A et al. (2019), Front Physiol 10:109, doi:10.3389/fphys.2019.00109. Fernandes et al. (2021), Int J Environ Res Public Health 18:12817, doi:10.3390/ijerph182312817. Fernandes R et al. (2022), Healthcare 10(4):695, doi:10.3390/healthcare10040695.
Scoring
3. Score each player against their own normal
A total out of 25 means little until you know what that player usually reports.
A total of 17 is a bad morning for a player who usually reports 21, and a normal one for a player who usually reports 17. Players use the scale differently, so a single squad cut-off flags the same pessimists every day and misses the optimist having a rough week. Compare each player with their own recent checks instead.
- 1
Add the five answers
That gives a total from 5 to 25 for each check.
- 2
Work out the player's normal
Take their average total over the previous 28 days, today not included, and the standard deviation (how much it usually moves).
- 3
See how far today sits from it
The z-score is today's total minus the average, divided by the standard deviation. 0 is a normal morning for that player; -1 is clearly worse than usual.
- 4
Check the single answers too
A 1 or 2 on any question is worth a word with the player even when the total looks fine. A total can hide one very sore hamstring.
- 5
Read it against the week
Before acting, ask what day it is in the match week. Section 4 covers why.
z = -1
Wellness score one standard deviation below the player's normal
In Australian football players, this came with 4.9 ± 3.1% lower training load (PlayerLoad) that day (Gallo et al. 2016). That is an association; no study has tested -1 as a cut-off.
No fixed threshold has been validated, for z-scores or anything else. Researchers recommend setting red flags relative to the microcycle and the stage of the season (Gallo et al. 2017), and a review of traffic-light systems found a lack of standardisation across sport (Robertson et al. 2017). The free Sheet below flags a player at z of -1 or lower once they have at least 10 earlier checks. That rule is our starting point, and you can change it in one cell.
Need at least two or three weeks of checks before you trust the comparison. A player's first ten answers tell you very little about their normal, which is why the Sheet says "Building baseline" until then.
Gallo TF et al. (2016), J Sports Sci 34(15):1445-51, doi:10.1080/02640414.2015.1119295. Gallo TF et al. (2017), J Strength Cond Res 31(2):495-502, doi:10.1519/jsc.0000000000001515. Robertson S, Bartlett JD, Gastin PB (2017), Int J Sports Physiol Perform, doi:10.1123/ijspp.2016-0541.
Match week
4. Expect the day after a match to look bad
Compare a player's MD+1 with their other MD+1s.
Wellness follows the match week, so the day after a game is supposed to look worse. In Premier League players, morning fatigue, sleep and soreness were 35 to 40% worse on the day after a match than on the day before (Thorpe et al. 2016). In professional players answering the McLean questions on a Google Form, wellness was lowest on MD+1 (the first day after the match) (Oliveira et al. 2023).
The player in the chart is made up, and the numbers were calculated the way the free Sheet calculates them. Every Sunday after a match, the total falls below the band and the Sheet would flag it: z of -1.9, -1.7 and -1.2. Those three come from the match. The Tuesday of week 2 is different: 14 out of 25, z of -3.1, three days after a match and four before the next. That is the morning to ask what happened.
So compare like with like. A player's MD+1 against their other MD+1s says more than MD+1 against their whole month. Two-game weeks change the pattern again. In one Portuguese top-division squad, the average Hooper index barely differed between one-game and two-game weeks (Clemente et al. 2017), and in Fractall's own data players still felt fresher than their own average on the morning of the second match, by a smaller margin than in weeks with more rest. Our two-games-a-week wellness analysis has the numbers.
Thorpe RT et al. (2016), Int J Sports Physiol Perform, doi:10.1123/ijspp.2015-0490. Oliveira et al. (2023), PLoS One, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0289374. Clemente FM et al. (2017), Physiol Behav 179:262-7, doi:10.1016/j.physbeh.2017.06.021. Chart: illustrative player calculated by Fractall on 26 October 2026; no club data used.
Routine
5. Ask before training, and show players what you did with it
Answers come in when staff use them and players can see it.
Most studies collect the questions in the morning or before the first session of the day (Thorpe et al. 2016; Moalla et al. 2016). That is also when the answer is useful, because you can still change the session. In Fractall's data, 67% of wellness check-ins from Portuguese clubs (1,153 submissions, April to September 2026) arrived between 06:00 and noon (when athletes submit wellness and RPE).
84% vs 8%
Average completion: team athletes with coach support, against team athletes left to do it themselves
Saw, Main and Gastin 2015, 131 athletes. Self-directed individual athletes averaged 28%.
Players keep answering when they see the answers change something. In interviews, lack of feedback was the main cause of poor buy-in, and training changes athletes saw as disproportionate led to dishonest answers (Neupert et al. 2019). In another group, fear of punishment led some athletes to report the same answer every day (Saw et al. 2015). Fractall's own data shows how fragile the habit is: 47% of athlete-weeks with any wellness or RPE check-in had exactly one day.
Keeping the check honest
- Ask at the same time every day, before the first session.
- Tell the squad what the answers are for, and who sees them.
- Act on a low answer with a conversation first. A player who reports a bad night and gets dropped will report a good one next time.
- Show the squad something back every week, even a single team chart.
- With youth players, agree with parents and the club who can see health answers before you start.
The full playbook for getting players to answer, and keep answering, is in athlete buy-in for monitoring surveys.
Saw AE, Main LC, Gastin PB (2015), J Sports Sci Med, PMC4657415 (completion) and J Sports Sci Med 14(1), PMC4306765 (interviews). Neupert E, Cotterill S, Jobson S (2019), Int J Sports Physiol Perform, doi:10.1123/ijspp.2018-0098. Moalla W et al. (2016), Res Sports Med, doi:10.1080/15438627.2016.1239579. Fractall figures from 5,605 wellness and sRPE check-ins at 32 clubs, 9 April to 13 September 2026.
Free template
6. Free Google Form and Sheet for a daily wellness questionnaire
The five McLean questions as a form players answer on their phone, and a Sheet that scores each check against the player's last 28 days.
Football researchers use Google Forms for this too (Oliveira et al. 2023), and players need nothing installed: the link opens in the phone browser. The Form asks the five McLean questions with every answer labelled, plus an optional note for staff. Three answers are lightly edited for players, such as "friends" for "co-workers". Every question is required, and none has an answer selected in advance, so nobody can submit a score they didn't pick.
- 1
Make a copy of both
Each link asks you to sign in to Google and makes a copy in your own Drive. Google can take a little while to build the copy, so leave the tab open until it loads. Nothing is shared with us.
- 2
Add your squad
In your copy of the Form, edit the Name question and replace Player 1, Player 2 and Player 3 with your players.
- 3
Link the Form to the Sheet
In the Form, open Responses, click Link to Sheets, choose Select existing spreadsheet and pick your copy of the Sheet. Google adds a tab called Form Responses 1. If your Google account is in another language, rename that tab to Form Responses 1.
- 4
Send players the link
They answer before training. The Scores tab fills in on its own, and the Today tab lists today's checks with the lowest z-score first.
What the free version won't do
- It doesn't remind anyone. You send the link, and you chase the players who didn't answer.
- Anyone with the link can answer as any player. Keep the link in the squad group.
- Two answers on one day both count. Delete the extra row in Form Responses 1.
- The Scores tab reads columns by position. Keep the questions in order and leave email collection off.
- It shows wellness on its own. Training load lives somewhere else.
If you track training load in a spreadsheet already, our athlete monitoring spreadsheet template covers session RPE, ACWR and monotony, and when a spreadsheet stops being worth the time.
Form or app
7. What app can my players use for a daily wellness questionnaire on their phone?
A free form works. An app saves the coach's time, mostly in chasing and reading.
Any form that opens in a phone browser works: Google Forms or Microsoft Forms, at no cost. For one squad and a coach with ten minutes each morning, the free Form and Sheet above are enough. We found no study showing that an app gets more honest or more complete answers than a web form. What drove completion in the research was staff support (Saw et al. 2015).
Where an app earns its cost is the coach's time. Look for a reminder that arrives on each player's phone, a list of who hasn't answered with a way to nudge them, wellness shown next to session RPE and load, and one place for every squad. You can try the same five questions, with the team view a coach sees, in our free wellness survey tool, no signup needed.
Signs the form has become the job
- You message the same players every morning to get answers in.
- You scroll the Sheet to find who is low, then open another file to see their load.
- You run more than one squad, and each has its own Form and Sheet.
- Staff ask for the numbers and you send screenshots.
In Fractall
The same five questions in Fractall
Players answer in the app, and the coach sees wellness next to training load.
Fractall's daily check uses the same five McLean-based questions, 1 to 5 with 5 as the best answer, added up to a score out of 25. A coach who starts on the Google Form keeps the same scale when the squad moves over. The answer labels in the app are worded a little differently from the published McLean version.
A daily wellness check in Fractall
1
Set the reminder time for the team. By default players get a reminder at 08:00 and a follow-up an hour later, on their own phone.
2
Players answer the five questions, and can mark sore spots on a body map, add a note, and, for female athletes, record menstruation.
3
In response monitoring, see who hasn't answered and send them a reminder with one click.
4
Read the team's wellness next to session RPE and training load, with any answer below 3 flagged.
5
Enter answers for a player yourself when someone fills it in on paper or tells you in person.
The wellness tracking page shows what the coach sees: the squad view with low answers flagged, the body pain map, and trends next to training load. Response monitoring is where the morning chasing goes, and session RPE puts the load from the same players beside their wellness. For female players, menstrual cycle tracking adds cycle context to the same morning check.
What Fractall doesn't do yet
- The questions are fixed. You can't add, remove or reword them, and there is no Hooper option.
- The total is shown in fixed bands (20 and above, 16 to 19, 12 to 15, below 12), and single answers below 3 are flagged. It doesn't compare a player with their own normal the way the free Sheet does. Export to CSV to run that comparison yourself.
- Flags show on the dashboard. Fractall doesn't send the coach an alert when a score drops.
- Submitting needs a connection. A player without signal answers once back online.
- Each answer starts at a set value, so a player who submits without moving a slider records an answer they didn't pick. Ask players to set every slider.
- There is one check per player per day. Answering again replaces the first one.
- You can't import answers from a Google Form, so the baseline starts again when you move over.
Put wellness next to training load
Players answer the same five questions in the app, you see who hasn't answered, and wellness sits beside session RPE and load. The first month is free.
Limits
What this guide can't tell you
Small studies, unvalidated questions, and an example player who doesn't exist.
Most of the football studies here followed one squad of 9 to 35 players. The questions themselves have not been formally validated, and the McLean wording above comes from later papers that reproduce it, since we couldn't check the 2010 original.
The z-score rule in the Sheet is a starting point we chose. Nobody has shown that -1, or any other cut-off, is the right moment to change a session. The chart shows one invented player with a tidy weekly pattern; your squad won't be that neat.
A wellness score is not a diagnosis, and this guide makes no claim that it predicts injury. Pain, illness and anything that worries you go to the medical staff.
FAQs
Frequently asked questions
What coaches ask before they start a daily wellness check.
What questions should a football wellness questionnaire include?
Five: fatigue, sleep quality, general muscle soreness, stress and mood. This is the McLean questionnaire, first used in professional rugby league (McLean et al. 2010) and since then in many football studies. Each question has five answers from 1 to 5, and 5 is always the best answer, so the total runs from 5 to 25.
How do you score a wellness questionnaire?
Add the five answers to get a total out of 25, then compare it with the same player's own recent checks. A simple way is a z-score against their previous 28 days: how far today's total sits from their average, in standard deviations. No fixed cut-off has been validated, so treat any threshold as a starting point and read it against the match week.
What is the Hooper index?
A four-question wellness score from Hooper et al. (1995), a study of elite swimmers: sleep, stress, fatigue and muscle soreness, each on a 1 to 7 scale, added together. In most football studies 1 is the best answer, so the total runs from 4 to 28 and lower is better, but some papers score sleep the other way. Check the direction before you compare numbers.
Can I use Google Forms for a wellness questionnaire?
Yes. Published football studies have collected the McLean questionnaire through Google Forms (Oliveira et al. 2023), and players can answer it in a phone browser without installing anything. What a form won't do on its own is score the answers, compare each player with their normal, or remind players who haven't answered. The free Google Form and Sheet in this guide cover the first two.
What app can my players use to fill in a daily wellness questionnaire on their phone?
Any form that opens in a phone browser works, such as Google Forms or Microsoft Forms, and costs nothing. A monitoring app such as Fractall adds a daily reminder on each player's phone, a list of who hasn't answered, and wellness next to training load in one place. Move to an app when chasing answers and reading the sheet takes longer than the check itself.
Which questions does your squad answer each morning, and what do you do with a low score? If you have changed the questions, the scale or the flag and it worked better, we would like to hear it.
Related guides
Two Games a Week: What Wellness Data Shows Before Match 2
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Winter Break Training Plan for Football S&C Coaches
Winter break training plan for football: what two weeks off costs, the minimum to prescribe at home, and how to log it so January ACWR stays honest.
When Athletes Submit Wellness and RPE: 5,605 Check-Ins
Fractall platform data from 631 athletes at 32 clubs. Wellness peaks at 08:00, sRPE after 17:00, and the median athlete-week holds two check-in days.