Paperless Weight Management

Our newest feature — Paperless Weight Management — is built into Releae 2.11. More information on this feature here: https://www.levelchanger.com/weight-management

Download this release from the App Store. Recommended for all users.

Does Wrestling Have A Concussion Problem?

Wrestling may or may not have a “concussion” problem in the form of unhealthy or extreme weight loss, perceived by prospective wrestlers or the parent community. To be sure, parents are more attentive to health-related risks associated with contact sports and guide their children accordingly. It is also a fact that high school wrestling participation has been trending down for a number of years.

Fortunately, in most states “official” weigh ins — those associated with competition — are tightly monitored and controlled. On the other hand, how wrestlers manage their weight between competitons is loosely monitored and uncontrolled. Extreme weight loss — up or down — can and does occur in the inter-competition period. Stories abound — and parents are aware — of wrestlers gaining a lot of weight post-competition and losing too much weight just prior to competition. This is risky and potentially unhealthy behavior, especially at pre-college levels. Yet, sanctioning bodies — state or national — exercise no oversight of between competition weights.

Impractical for Many Teams

Coaches are in a difficult spot. Recording weight for each wrestler before or after wrestling practice is time-consuming and labor intensive. Further, , organizing, interpreting and sharing the data is non-trivial. Lastly, alerting wrestlers (and parents) to unhealthy weight excursions is yet another task. Most teams don’t have the time or resources to undertake this effort in a systematic way. Some teams avoid the systematic approach by cherry-picking which wrestlers to monitor or checking weights only as needed or both. In a huge leap of faith, about one-third of coaches delegate to the wrestler the task of keeping their parents apprised of weight-related issues.

Paperless Weight Management is Here

We’ve had paperless weight management in our development plan for a few years but it never made the cut. Late last spring, Befour, a leading supplier of wrestling scales, approached us about a partnership to integrate paperless weight management into Takedown. The timing was right as we were finishing up video and having a heavy-weight (sorry) partner made the opportunity attractive. Befour has proven to be a reliable and helpful partner.

Takedown’s paperless weight management feature makes it easy and time efficient to record weights. In addition, our Reports now include three visualizations — a table and two graphs — that make it easy to identify unhealthy or non-compliant weight loss. These visualizations, like all Takedown Reports, can be emailed or exported in spreadsheet format from within the app. For the first time, a systematic, time-efficient approach to weight management is possible for any wrestling team.

For more details about Takedown’s paperless weight management, see: https://www.levelchanger.com/weight-management .

Shot Counter and Success Rate

With release 2.4.2, Takedown Scoring and Stats introduces a new-to-the-world of wrestling capability: a simple Shot Counter and associated stat called Shot Success Rate. Developed in cooperation with a Top 20 Division I team, this new feature allows coaches, for the first time, to easily assess how aggressive and effective wrestlers are in the neutral position.

Using the Shot Counter is optional and has no impact on scoring. The purpose of the feature and associated statistics is to give coaches a simple way to record shots and understand neutral position performance. The Shot Counter is available in the Scoring interface for your wrestler and the opposing wrestler.  The implementation is simple with large '+' buttons to add shots and '-' button to remove shots in the case of an error.

The new Shot Success Rate report presents the total number of takedowns and shots at the match level by period and total.  Results are totaled for each wrestler and across all wrestlers for a view of team performance. Like all reports, you can use filters to narrow the scope over which the Shot Success Rate calculation is performed.  For more info on reports, see our recent blog post.

Here's a tutorial on using the Shot Counter and generating the Shot Success Rate report: