Safe at Home
A parent running PE without a coaching background wants to know what keeps their child safe when nobody with a whistle is watching. This page is that list. Every rule on it is one the programme enforces, quoted from the code that enforces it, not a reassurance written for the page.
Every session opens and closes the same way
The warm-up and the cool-down are drills in the catalogue, not a reminder at the top of a lesson. They carry their own steps, their own coaching points and their own Audio Coach script, and they are logged like everything else. The coaching points below are the drill's own.
Warm-Up Jog & Stretch 5 min
Light jog around cones, followed by dynamic stretches (leg swings, arm circles, lunges).
- Keep it conversational — they should be able to talk the whole way through. A warm-up they cannot speak during is a session, and they will start the real work already tired.
- Dynamic movement only, never static stretching before a session. Holding a stretch cold tells the muscle to relax at exactly the moment you want it ready to fire.
- Finish faster than you started. The last minute should be near match pace, because the first tackle will be — a warm-up that ends at jogging speed has not prepared them for the thing that follows it.
- Do it alongside them rather than calling it from the side. At every age the warm-up is the part most likely to be skipped, and a parent jogging too is what stops it becoming a negotiation.
Cool-Down & Debrief 5 min
Slow jog, static stretches (30s each: quads, hamstrings, calves, groin), and chat about what went well.
- Walk the heart rate down before stretching. Dropping straight into a static stretch from full effort is where the light-headedness comes from; two minutes of walking first solves it.
- Hold gently, never bounce. Thirty seconds of still hold per muscle is the whole technique, and bouncing into a stretch is the one thing here that can actually cause an injury.
- This is relationship time, not correction time. Whatever went badly in the session will still be true tomorrow, and a debrief that turns into a review teaches them to dread the last five minutes.
- Ask what went well before anything else, and let them answer first. A child who names their own good moment remembers it; a child who is told theirs remembers being told.
From drill_catalog.py: pt-warmup and pt-cooldown.
A week has a ceiling, and it depends on the child's age
Doing too much too soon is the injury most families can actually prevent. After each session the student rates how hard it felt, and that rating times the minutes is the session's load. The programme keeps a running total and holds it under a ceiling for the age band, with a lower daily ceiling and a cap on hard sessions in a week. The ceilings are conservative for the younger bands because growth plates are, and they scale with the child's own growth where a family tracks it.
| Band | Weekly ceiling | Daily ceiling | Hard sessions a week | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| U14 7th – 8th grade | 3,000 | 650 | 5 | Growth plate sensitivity. Monitor growth spurts. |
| U16 9th – 10th grade | 4,000 | 800 | 6 | Increased capacity. Watch for multi-sport overload. |
| U18 11th – 12th grade | 5,000 | 1,000 | 7 | Near-adult capacity. Full periodization applicable. |
Load is session RPE × minutes, in arbitrary units, the way sports science counts it. A week is judged against the four before it: between 0.8 and 1.3 times the recent average is the working range; above 1.5 the next session is cut to active recovery rather than run as planned. Below the range is flagged too, because a child who is doing far less than usual is about to do far more.
The same numbers drive the Season: a week that is running hot gets a gentler match, not a harder one. The U16 curriculum's Periodization & Peaking unit teaches the student the same arithmetic, so they can read their own week.
From workload_engine.py: AGE_BAND_CAPS and the ACWR zone thresholds, citing Gabbett (2016) and Pichardo et al. (2019).
When a child is hurt, the plan bends until they are back
A family used to have two honest options when a child was injured: log nothing, and hand an evaluator a record that looks like a family who stopped teaching, or log a session that did not happen. The programme has a third. A parent records the injury, and the plan runs up a five-stage ladder, the same five stages the health curriculum teaches the student in Returning After an Injury, so the child is never asked to climb a different ladder from the one they were taught.
- RestNothing physical. The session is video analysis, tactical work and reading — which is still instructional PE time.
- MovementGentle movement without running or jumping — mobility, balance, light ball touches on the spot.
- LoadReal work at walking pace. Technique and touch, with the running and jumping volume kept down.
- ContactBack to the full range of activity, with longer rests and a session that stops before it becomes a hard one.
- Full playEverything as before. The last stage deliberately includes a small dose of near-maximum running, because sprinting is what makes a hamstring resilient to sprinting.
A parent records where the injury is — ankle, knee, hip, hamstring, groin, calf, foot, back, shoulder, arm, head — and which stage the child is on. No stage carries a duration, a minimum or a typical length: that would be a clinical claim about a real child, and the product does not make one. The next stage is offered only when the parent's own check-in is all green, and the question is handed to a clinician when it is not.
A head injury does not run the ladder. It holds at Rest until the parent records that someone qualified has seen the child. That is the one place the product is deliberately more conservative than its own logic, and it costs nothing to be.
Rest still counts. A session at the Rest stage is video analysis, tactical work and reading, which is instructional PE time and is logged as such, so the compliance record stays true through the injury rather than going dark.
From injury_service.py: STAGES, STAGE_PROFILE, BODY_AREAS and CLINICIAN_FIRST. tests/test_injury_does_not_diagnose.py fails if a duration is ever added to a stage.
Head injuries: stop, and see someone qualified
A blow to the head, or a fall that jolts it, is the one injury a parent must not manage from a checklist. The programme's rule is above: a head injury holds the plan at Rest, and the ladder does not offer the next stage until the parent records that a clinician has seen the child. What follows is general awareness, so a parent knows what to look for in the hours and days afterwards. It is not a diagnosis tool and it is not a return-to-play protocol; the clinician sets that.
Stop the session at once if a child takes a knock to the head and shows any of these, on the day or in the days after:
- Headache, or pressure in the head
- Dizziness, balance problems, or clumsiness
- Nausea or vomiting
- Sensitivity to light or noise
- Feeling foggy, slowed down, or “not right”
- Confusion, or trouble remembering what happened
- Answering questions slowly, or repeating them
- Mood, behaviour or sleep that is not like them
- Blurred or double vision
- Losing consciousness, even briefly
Seek emergency care for a worsening headache, repeated vomiting, a seizure, weakness or numbness, slurred speech, one pupil larger than the other, unusual drowsiness or an inability to wake, or any loss of consciousness. Those are the danger signs the CDC lists, and they are not a judgement call.
A student should not return to any physical activity while they have symptoms, and should not return the same day under any circumstances. Rest from screens and reading may be part of what the clinician advises; the Rest stage above accommodates it, because it logs cognitive work only when the child can do it. The CDC HEADS UP programme is the reference a parent should read in full, and it is written for exactly this situation.
This section is general information from public health guidance. It is not medical advice, and Spatrian does not make medical judgements about any child. A parent who is unsure should treat the injury as serious and ask a clinician.
Heading, under conditions
Heading a ball is a skill in soccer and a risk to a young head, and youth leagues across the country restrict it by age. The programme has one heading drill, it runs under a soft ball only, and its coaching points are the rules rather than tips. They are quoted below from the drill.
- Soft ball only, always — a foam or sponge ball, never a match ball. This is not a precaution to relax once they are confident; it is the condition under which the drill is run at all.
- Forehead, not the crown. Contact on the hairline with the eyes open is the technique; contact on top of the head is where the ball wins and where the neck takes the load.
- Neck firm and push through the ball rather than letting it hit them. Waiting for the ball is what produces a jarred neck; attacking it gently is safer as well as more effective.
- Keep the sets very short and stop the moment they flinch. Flinching means they have lost confidence in the ball, and pushing through it teaches fear rather than technique.
From drill_catalog.py: pt-heading. Follow your own league's and region's heading guidance where it is stricter.
When the weather says stay in
Heat and cold are the two conditions a home session is most likely to get wrong, because nobody is calling training off. The weekly planner reads a real forecast for the family's location and marks the days an outdoor session is not sensible.
Below 35°F or above 95°F, or in rain, snow, fog or a storm, the weekly planner marks the day as not one for an outdoor session and offers the indoor alternatives instead. The forecast is fetched for the family's own location; when it cannot be, the planner says so rather than guessing.
The indoor drills are the same skill work at a lower speed, and they are logged the same way. Water within reach, shade in summer and layers in winter are still the parent's call; the planner's job is to make sure the call gets made.
From homeschool_enhanced.py: the outdoor temperature bounds and the Open-Meteo condition table.
The waiver, and what it records
Before a family starts the programme, a parent signs three acknowledgements: the activity waiver, the warranty statement, and that the training environment is theirs to make safe. The signature is stored against the family's account with the date, the device and the network address it came from, so it is defensible if it is ever disputed, and it is never shared across families or lost on a restart.
The programme's own limits are stated on the documents it produces too. Every transcript carries a disclaimer that Spatrian provides supplementary PE instruction and does not constitute an accredited record, and it cannot be edited out. The terms of service carry the limitation of liability in full.
From routes/parent_training.py: the consent record. Consent status is per account, and the homeschool pages open with the signing step until it is done.
See what a session looks like
The Audio Coach sample on the homepage runs a drill out loud, warm-up first. Or check what fits in your space.
Check your space and kit