Finding Small Wins

Rethinking Load Management and Smarter GPS Metrics in Pro Soccer featuring Adam Parr

Episode Summary

Modern soccer has outgrown total distance and basic workload tracking. In this episode, Adam Loiacono sits down with MLS performance scientist Adam Parr to break down why load management is shifting toward smarter GPS metrics like acceleration load, deceleration profiles, and true work-rate intensity.

Episode Notes

Adam Parr’s journey through Major League Soccer spans over a decade — from early heart-rate monitoring days at Chivas USA, to leading performance and sport science roles in Minnesota, San Jose, and now Charlotte. He’s is one of the practitioners who has lived the full spectrum: strength coach, sports scientist, high-performance director, and architect of long-term development pathways across academy, second-team, and first-team environments.

In this episode, Adam and I dive into three crucial lessons shaping the future of performance in pro soccer.

• First, why total distance is no longer a meaningful metric — and how acceleration loads, deceleration counts, and work-rate profiles give a far clearer picture of physical demand.
• Second, how load management must consider growth and maturation, especially when developing young athletes through peak-height-velocity windows.
• And third, why true applied sport science lives between the laptop and the training pitch — taking information from GPS, training design, and physical profiling to make decisions that keep players both healthy and available.

This conversation is about where the sport is going — and why smarter data beats more data every time.