Four Ways to use Driveline PULSE: Getting the Most Out of PULSE Lite

By Kyle Lindley, Driveline PULSE Product Manager, Sports Science Asst. Manager

Driveline PULSE helps you manage workload—even if you don’t have all of the bells and whistles. 

Two effective options for managing a team of athletes and their workloads are premium subscriptions to PULSE DASH and integrating PULSE with TRAQ. But you can also manage workload effectively without them.

Here are a few ways to prepare your staff to dominate on a small budget:

Four ways PULSE alone can help you manage workload and more

1. Counting total and high effort throws

In-game pitch counts give an incomplete picture of throwing workload. Having your players wear PULSE sensors throughout their entire practice, game, or throwing-involved workout gives you a better picture of how many total throws they execute each day. This goes for pitchers AND position players.

Whether you have players working out in a different location, playing different positions, or just have limited hands to monitor throw counts for all of your athletes, PULSE makes it easy to know if any of your players are throwing too much or not enough.

How to review your players’ throw counts:

1. Log in to your PULSE Coach account on your Apple device.
2. Select the athlete whose throw counts you would like to review.
3. Click on ‘Today’ at the top of the page to select the date you wish to look at.
4. Review total throw counts and high effort throw counts, as well as torque, arm speed, and arm slot for all throws on the line graph at the bottom of the dashboard.

2. On-ramp from the off season

During breaks in the season or when coming out of the off-season, players often need to on-ramp to an in-season level of throwing fitness. PULSE takes the math out of how much your players should be throwing at those times. 

You choose which days your players should throw and then PULSE will prescribe a 1-day workload that will help build throwing fitness while minimizing the players’ chances of over-throwing.

How to set a training schedule and on-ramp your players:

1. Log in to your PULSE Coach account on your Apple device.
2. Select the athlete whose training schedule you want to set.
3. Click on their name at the top of the screen once you go into their profile.
4. Click on ‘Training Schedule’.
5. Select off-season or pre-season (whichever is most appropriate for your case).
6. Select which days the player should be throwing (and opening day date if you selected pre-season).

The Max Recommended 1-Day Workload on the athlete’s dashboard should now reflect a prescribed workload for each throwing day that will build their chronic workload to prepare them for the season.

3. Compare workloads of different training days

It’s very difficult to know exactly how much throwing goes on during practices, games, recovery workouts, and other training days. Using the tag feature when syncing throws, you can label throws from the day by workout type and compare total throw counts, high effort throw counts, and 1-day workloads to evaluate the long-term effects each workout is having on an athlete’s performance.

How to tag all throws from the day:

1. Make sure the sensor is fully charged before putting it on for training/practice or a game.
2. Complete all throws.
3. Place the sensor back on the charger as soon after throwing as possible.
4. Log in to your Coach or Athlete PULSE account and connect the sensor to your mobile device.
5. Open the sensor management page.
6. Select ‘Sync Data’.
7. Add tag.
8. Confirm ‘Sync Data’.
9. Compare average values by tag-type in PULSE DASH Box Score Tag Analysis.
   *Note: You can also sync multiple sensors to different accounts at once using the team data sync feature on a PULSE Coach account.

4. Plan and chart bullpens

Using Bullpen Mode in PULSE, you can improve focus and intention during bullpens by charting what pitch is being thrown, where the intended location of the pitch is, where the actual pitch was located, and review bullpen performance after completing the session.

How to plan and chart bullpens with PULSE:

1. Log in to a coach or athlete profile in the PULSE iOS app.
2. Navigate to the advanced tab of an athlete profile (the right-most tab).
3. Click on ‘Bullpen’.
4. Click ‘Begin Bullpen’.
5. Create a custom sequence of bullpen pitches with pitch type, motion, location, and number of repetitions.
6. Begin that bullpen session by following the sequence of pitches and charting the location of the actual pitch.
7. Click ‘Done’ once the bullpen session is complete.
   *Note: This same procedure can be used to complete pre-game routines for better gameday pitch count recommendations.

What can PULSE DASH Pro do?

Here’s one example: individualized in-game pitch count guidelines/recommendations. Universal pitch count limits are not it. Two different athletes, or even the same athlete on two different days, should not always use the same pitch count recommendation. PULSE helps you choose an individualized pitch count guideline for your player based on their recent throwing history, as well as on the long-term throwing fitness they have built up. This is going to be different for all athletes.

How to get individualized pitch count recommendations:

1. Have all pitchers complete their gameday longtoss and gameday bullpen routines live in the mobile app.
2. Designate those sessions as gameday routines in the app (bullpen example, longtoss example).
3. Log in to your Coach account on pulsethrow.drivelinebaseball.com.
4. Go to the ‘Report Generator’ tab on the left menu.
5. Select ‘Gameday’ on the top left of the screen.
6. Choose a specific player or a whole team report.
7. Click ‘Generate Report’ in the top right of the screen.

Workload management is imperative for an effective pitching staff, and Driveline PULSE can do that for you. You can do more and learn more with premium TRAQ and PULSE DASH subscriptions (DASH Pro), but PULSE alone arms you with the essential tools for preparing your pitching staff to dominate.

If you are in the market for a PULSE workload management package, learn more about how easy it is to get started here. Create a profile, put the sensor and strap on your arm, and go through your throwing routine as usual!