Wellness is essential to give students the best head-start across school and their social life. It is a key focus for us at Haileybury as we continually aspire to bring wellness to the forefront of student wellbeing.
Haileybury’s extensive range of support programs ensure that all students have access to resources that target their wellbeing and offer extra education and assistance where needed.
Haileybury has launched a brilliant app helping members of the School’s First Sport Teams to maintain and improve their physical and mental wellbeing. It will combine the positive physical benefits of sport by monitoring wellness, fatigue, energy and injuries to ensure students are continually educated on maintaining a healthy state, therefore keeping them at peak mental and physical performance both inside and outside the school.
The app also enables resistance training and injury management programs to be created for students at the touch of a button.
Over the Christmas holidays, Haileybury provided 1300 Senior School students with a vast array of fitness training sessions they could do anywhere in the country, keeping them active and healthy.
Keeping Track of Health
The Visual Coaching Pro app will be introduced in time for this year’s Senior winter Sport season in the First AFL/AFLW, Basketball, Soccer, Rugby and Netball teams.
After downloading it on their laptop, tablet or phone, students are prompted with questions about their physical and mental condition. Their responses then prompt continued education, physical and mental, on how to best manage themselves throughout the schooling week.
Questions cover topics such as sleep duration and quality, mood state, motivation, general soreness, and fatigue. For example, a student might be asked how many hours’ sleep they had and then to rate its quality, which can then be correlated to effects they may be feeling in other metrics captured.
Haileybury High Performance Coordinator Michael Odachowski initiated the app, which is based on wellness surveys he used to conduct via email over the previous couple of years.
The new system is much easier to access and collates the data so that he and Haileybury’s physiotherapy provider, Southern Suburbs Physio Centre (SSPC) can monitor the progress of students as they continue their Sporting season.
Mr Odachowski says the app will help ensure students are maintaining their physical and mental health and identify any potential issues so they can be addressed.
For example, if a student reported prolonged soreness, they might need to see a physiotherapist. The app could also identify if a student may need to deal with a lack of sleep.
A Professional Approach
Mr Odachowski says this sort of technology is used by elite sporting teams, however Haileybury, being an elite school, is no different. “We are here to get the best out of all our students and if we can intervene and educate them to enhance their wellbeing, we are on the right track,” he says.
“These programs are used in a professional and semi-professional club or team environment. From a sporting perspective, and in everyday life, it shows you how important it is to sleep well, eat well and understand your body to maximise performance.
“Ultimately we hope that the app will help students to achieve a higher ATAR by maintaining and where necessary improving their health and wellbeing.”
