Readiness score: what goes into it and how to read it

A readiness score is an attempt to condense “how am I today” into one number. When you know what it comes from and how to read it, it saves you a lot of bad decisions.

What readiness is

Readiness is a daily score — typically 0 to 100 — that expresses how ready your body is for load today. A high number is a green light for quality training, a low one a signal that today is more for technique and recovery.

What it’s made of

A good score doesn’t rest on one figure but combines several inputs:

• Sleep — duration and quality, the strongest lever of recovery.
• Fatigue — how you feel compared to normal.
• Stress — school, work, nerves; the body doesn’t tell them apart from training stress.
• Pain — an input signal that pulls readiness down.
• Training load — how much you’ve piled on in recent days.

NEXT8 combines these inputs into the NEXT8 Index and also breaks it into a radar, so you see not just the result but what’s pulling it down today.

How to read it — and how not to

The score isn’t a grade or a contest. A low number doesn’t mean “you’re weak”, but “ease off today”. And one weak day settles nothing — what matters is the trend and whether readiness is falling long-term. Don’t take it as permission to switch off your brain either: common sense and how you actually feel still apply.

How to train by it

High readiness → go full, today can handle intensity and volume. Low → shorten, simplify, add a warm-up and go to bed earlier. It’s exactly this small daily correction that separates steady development from the “grind → burn out → break” cycle.