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During the first 17 years of my teaching and coaching career, I had little interest in privately training athletes. I related this to my experience as a math teacher: while I love teaching math, I didn’t tutor students privately because I prefer to have other mental stimulation after teaching similar content for five hours. The same could be said for training athletes—especially when I was in-season. I just didn’t think I would have the energy for it.

Then COVID-19 hit, and during my daily walks, I continued to run into the same neighbor. He recognized that I was a track coach (possibly because all I wear is Homewood-Flossmoor track and field attire)…and after a few conversations, he convinced me to train his child.

This was a blessing for me, as I needed the mental stimulation and coaching challenge to help fill the void that a canceled season created. Fast forward a couple of years, and I am still in the business of training athletes privately.

This article will not serve as a how-to but, rather, a reflection on takeaways from working through the process. Some thoughts may encourage you to start or continue training athletes privately; others may do the opposite.

Coaching Smaller Groups Has Helped Me Assess My Efficiency with Larger Ones

I coach a track team that typically has around 90–120 athletes, and my group on that team (jumpers) usually includes 20–25 athletes. I am used to working with large groups and managing multiple tasks within the same session. If you talk to most track and field coaches, they will say that they love the entire season, but championship season is extra special. One of the reasons why coaches enjoy championship season (besides the higher stakes) is because the athlete-to-coach ratio is lower.

Due to the design of my business—training 1–6 athletes at a time—I always feel as if I am in championship season during a session. Instead of feeling like I’m juggling 10 flaming bowling pins, I’m juggling three scarves, and it truly makes each session enjoyable.

I really feel like the additional practice has caused me to become more efficient in general and, more importantly, allowed me to identify the most critical issues to address for progress to occur. Share on X

One of the difficulties in coaching large groups is giving athletes timely feedback. The large number of athletes I have at track practice means that some of the video analysis and corresponding feedback must be done outside practice time and addressed during a later practice. Due to the smaller numbers I have in the private sector, this is easy to do within the session. While I have been giving feedback based on video during track practice most of my career, I really feel like the additional practice has caused me to become more efficient in general and, more importantly, allowed me to identify the most critical issues to address for progress to occur.

Improved Ability to Manage Training Loads for Track Athletes with Private Coaches

Another reason why I had some apprehension about training athletes privately was because of my experience as a high school coach. There is little more frustrating than an athlete having a fantastic track practice with a maximum velocity focus and then coming back absolutely fried the next day because of the 400 repeat session that was held after track practice with their private trainer.

Communicating with the athlete’s coach helps combat all-too-common issues like this. The coach can provide invaluable information in regard to what they see as strengths and weaknesses and what they feel the athlete needs to be able to do to receive more playing time or a more prominent role within the game plan. Another important question I ask is if the athlete wants me to communicate with their coach—sometimes they don’t, and it is my job to honor their wishes.

Even more important than communication with the athlete’s coach is communication with the athlete. The first four questions I ask each athlete in an individual/small-group session are:

1. How are you?
2. What have you done lately?
3. How do you feel today?
4. What’s coming up?

Based on these answers, we then end up doing 0%–100% of what I had in mind for the session. I have a hierarchy of activities based on intensity for common training themes/activities (acceleration, maximum velocity, curvilinear work, change of direction, etc.). Sometimes I have to switch to a different theme than planned; other times, I just work off the hierarchy of the theme that was planned.

To parents and athletes reading this, if your private trainer is not asking similar questions or is working off a prescribed program, that is a huge red flag. These questions are especially important if the athlete is in-season, but honestly, they carry close to the same weight when the athlete is in the off-season. What the athlete may be doing with the team in the off-season or in their physical education class must be considered for maximum gains to occur. While I firmly believe physical gains can happen during the competitive season, the off-season should be where the most occur. Do not let a lack of communication jeopardize gains at any point during the year!

At the end of the day, private trainers do not determine playing time, so potentially causing a conflict between the athlete and coach is doing the athlete a disservice, says @HFJumps. Share on X

The answers to the second and fourth questions can be activities that I deem questionable, but that’s irrelevant. My job is to take what I am presented with and create a plan of action to elicit the best possible outcome. While it may be difficult at times, involving myself in the process of questioning what the athlete is doing in their sports practice or off-season training will not help the situation. I would wave another huge red flag for any private trainer who actively initiates this conversation. At the end of the day, private trainers do not determine playing time, so potentially causing a conflict between the athlete and coach is doing the athlete a disservice.

Having a large toolbox to draw from is the best way of serving a client within the 0%–100% of what you may have planned for the session. It’s helpful to have a range of intensities for activities that focus on a specific issue. Most of my clients come to me to improve their speed. I am a firm believer that sprinting with maximum intent and intensity is the best way to do this; however, sometimes that is simply not an option based on the following:

• The weather (soon to not be an issue for me as my gym will have a Shredmill).
• How the athlete is feeling.
• What’s on the near horizon for the athlete.

Having a large toolbox allows for the session to be productive, even if it cannot be ideal.

• • Max-Velocity Sprinting: The Masters is said to be a tradition unlike any other, and in terms of training, sprinting at maximum velocity is a stimulus unlike any other.

 

• • Wickets: Most novice athletes operate at a submaximal velocity when sprinting through wickets. So, wickets can be a great option to rehearse the technical components of top-end speed while ensuring that the nervous system is ready to rock the following day.

 

• • Jump Rope Run and Med Ball Punch Run: Maybe the first two items are too intense because the athlete is in a return-to-play scenario. Both of these drills offer the opportunity to utilize foot strike mechanics and postures found during maximum velocity.

 

• Altitude Drops and Rebound Jump Test: Athletes may be in a situation where the cyclic nature of sprinting causes irritation. These two exercises allow for them to still be challenged with large forces.

Video 1. An example of an athlete performing an altitude drop, which is a fantastic way to allow an athlete to express force eccentrically. Coaches can match the angles found in the landing position with the training target. If it were maximum velocity, I would look for less bend in the knee and hip.

• Isometrics: My preferred method of isometrics is of the “extreme” variety, which involves an active action by antagonist muscle(s). It can be argued that even though the amount of movement is often minuscule, it is still considered high-velocity exercise.

The clients who have made the most progress are the ones I have seen at least twice per week. I understand this is not feasible for some athletes for a variety of reasons, so I do my best to devise an individualized plan for them to follow based on their entire workload. “Homework” can increase the rate of progress, but it does not replace in-person sessions. I know trainers who will not take on clients who cannot commit to meeting at least twice a week. While I don’t do that, I understand their position, and it may make sense for you!

4 Logistical Considerations for H.S. Track Coaches Pondering Private Training

There are other concerns you should be aware of if you’re considering starting to privately train athletes. These are less development-focused and more business-oriented.

If you’re starting to privately train athletes, you should open a separate bank account, start an LLC, obtain insurance, and have them sign a waiver, says HFJumps. Share on X

1. 1. Open a bank account. Do your best to run all of your financial transactions out of it. This makes it easier when tax time rolls around. Also, take advantage of the tax write-offs owning a business affords you! It is never a bad idea to talk to an accountant about this.

 

1. 1. If you are going to train people out of your home, start an LLC (or something similar). I used Legal Zoom. The LLC offers protection in case you get sued. Put simply, it separates your personal assets from your business assets.

 

1. 1. Obtain separate insurance. My uncle is a vice president of an insurance company. Instead of obtaining insurance through the company he works for, he advised me to use K&K Insurance. They offer $1 million in coverage for under $250. You can obviously go in whichever direction you want with an insurance provider, but this at least gives you a point of reference.

 

1. Consider having clients fill out a waiver. My wife is a lawyer—she tells me waivers are essentially useless. However, you may still want to use one for a small level of protection. A simple internet search on “personal training waivers” is a good place to start.

Whether you’ve been in the private game for a while, are new to it, or are considering getting into it, I hope some of the items mentioned here have sparked some thought. Since I am new to it myself, I would love for the comments to be filled with additional pieces of advice!

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As I like to tell the athletes who undergo physiological testing with me, “this test is like a really long warm-up with 10 minutes of pain at the end.” On the last couple of steps, you can expect burning legs and lungs while your heart beats close to its maximal frequency.

When you go to the lab to get testing done, that’s usually what you remember: the pain and discomfort you experienced as you neared the end of your ramp or step test.

But behind this veil of sensory overload, there is a tremendous amount of information that we, as coaches, can collect through physiological testing.

There is a tremendous amount of information that we, as coaches, can collect through physiological testing, says @SeanSeale. Share on X

The purpose of this article is to share how I use a physiological profile test to individualize, optimize, and orient the conditioning training of the athletes I have the opportunity to work with.

The first section briefly introduces the intensity spectrum—the different physiological thresholds, intensity domains, and training zones—which will make the rest of the article easier to understand and follow. Even if you don’t have extensive exercise physiology or conditioning knowledge, this first part will provide a strong foundation to understand these concepts.

The second section explains what a physiological profile is, why it is useful to track our athletes’ fitness, and how that data can help us coaches make better decisions regarding training interventions and program design.

In the third section, I describe in full detail which test protocols I use and why I chose them over other available options. This section also covers which measurement tools I use to complete the physiological profile as well as their respective strengths and weaknesses. (In the interests of transparency, I’d like to mention that I collaborate with and am affiliated with Moxy Monitor, VO2 Master, and Breathe Way Better.)

This article wouldn’t be complete without including my process for interpreting the data collected during the test and how I organize it into a report for both the coach and the athlete. This will be covered in the fourth section.

To finish, I will provide some practical examples around training recommendations and planning for different types of athletes I’ve worked with and what results they achieved.

Section 1: Defining Thresholds, Intensity Domains, and Training Zones

Before we delve into the physiological profile and what it entails, we must establish some common ground and make sure we speak the same language. Let’s kick things off with a few definitions.

The term “threshold” gets thrown around a lot in conditioning and endurance circles, but it is seldom defined. Although it’s important to acknowledge the dynamic nature of thresholds, for simplicity’s sake, we will define a physiological threshold as representing the point of transition between two different intensity domains.

There are two primary thresholds (threshold 1 and threshold 2) that can each be measured at different levels of the organism, resulting in many other (and often confusing) names used to qualify them. The illustration below summarizes the most common terms used to define those two thresholds.

There are four exercise intensity domains. An intensity domain is an intensity range that elicits a distinct physiological response, commonly centered around the VO2 kinetics, or simply put, the way that the trend of oxygen uptake behaves in the body.

In the moderate domain (below threshold 1), oxygen uptake reaches a plateau shortly after exercise onset. In the heavy domain (between thresholds 1 and 2), we can observe a “slow component” or delayed steady state in VO2.

In the severe domain (above threshold 2), the slow component never settles, and if the activity is carried out for long enough, the athlete reaches their VO2peak and task failure shortly after. The extreme domain is characterized by intensities so high that the subject reaches task failure before manifesting their VO2peak (peak oxygen uptake).

Together with thresholds, these concepts form a practical model to individualize the training intensity distribution of our athletes accurately. Since training in different domains triggers different physiological responses, we can use this model to target the specific intensity that will, in turn, elicit the training adaptations we’re looking for.

Once we have defined thresholds and domains, we can cut these up into training zones to simplify training prescription and application. As Jem Arnold stated, “intensity domains are descriptive while training zones are prescriptive.” Different coaches use different numbers of zones; I will be talking about seven distinct training zones.

You can also learn more about thresholds and training zones here.

Section 2: Defining the Physiological Profile

Now that we have a common understanding of what those terms mean, let’s talk about the physiological profile, what it is, why it’s important, and what it’s composed of.

What Is a Physiological Profile?

A physiological profile is a test (or series of tests) that allows us to measure and analyze an athlete’s unique conditioning profile within a given modality. If we want to plan training intelligently, we can gain a significant advantage by knowing what is going on “under the hood.” Referring to section 1, we want first to define the athlete’s thresholds, intensity domains, and training zones.

We also want to know the athlete’s respiratory capacity, how they use it (respiratory coordination), how much oxygen they consume at different intensities, and how metabolically efficient they are.

Using the data collected during a physiological profile and knowing the athlete’s needs, we can make informed decisions on how to orient their training relative to the adaptations we seek to elicit. Share on X

By using the data collected during a physiological profile and knowing the athlete’s needs (sport, competition calendar, strengths/weaknesses, etc.), we can make informed decisions on how to orient their training relative to what adaptations we seek to elicit.

For this article, I’ll refer to testing being done on a bike. I like using the Concept 2 BikeErg for its versatility, simplicity of use, and availability in local gyms. Since I’m working primarily with CrossFit and combat sports athletes at the moment, this modality works quite well. 

Why Is the Physiological Profile Important/Useful?

Conditioning training is often prescribed on the basis of heart rate zones given as percentages of the athlete’s maximal heart rate. To draw a parallel to strength development, this is the equivalent of prescribing squat weights as percentages of the athlete’s body weight. For some, it will be right on the money, but for the vast majority of people, it will either be too high or too low.

To give a concrete example of this, the percentage of max heart rate equivalent to threshold 1 (or the transition from zone 2 to zone 3) in the athletes I’ve tested so far ranges from 65% to 85%.

This is why it’s imperative to establish an athlete’s individual intensity profile. We want to be sure that the training we program is the stimulus needed on an individual basis to drive specific athletic and physiologic adaptations.

Fixed percentages of max heart rate are not only an oversimplification, but they also don’t reflect the adaptive nature of human physiology.

As you train consistently over time, your physiology (hopefully) changes. This has to be reflected in your individual intensity profile for your training to stay “true” to your abilities.

As you train consistently over time, your physiology (hopefully) changes. This has to be reflected in your individual intensity profile for your training to stay ‘true’ to your abilities. Share on X

So first and foremost, a physiological profile provides us with the athlete’s unique intensity distribution profile. This is then organized into training zones for practical reasons. The zones will usually be defined through power/speed AND heart rate values to help with programming, progress tracking, and autoregulation when necessary.

In addition to providing individualized training zones for the athlete, the physiological profile will also help our decision-making process when deciding what qualities need to be developed in that athlete. Knowing “what to do next” has to be contextualized relative to the competition calendar and time of the season, but if we can SEE where our athlete is strong and where he needs work, this does help us program in a more coherent way overall.

Another benefit of the physiological profile is that it provides us coaches with a substantial amount of data that can be tracked and compared over time.

It’s also a great way to know if your training interventions are ACTUALLY making your athletes better. And more specifically, what aspects of their physiology you’re able to change/improve through specific training means.

Now that we understand how a physiological profile can benefit you and your athletes, let’s look at the testing protocols and why we’re using them.

The Testing Protocol

The physiological profile I’ve been performing with endurance athletes, CrossFit athletes, and combat athletes alike consists of three main parts that each serve a specific purpose.

• • The critical power test provides us with performance metrics and helps calibrate the step test. It also informs us on the athlete’s athletic profile (endurant vs. powerful).

 

• • The spirometry test gives us the athlete’s respiratory capacity.

 

• And finally, the 4-1 step test is where most of the physiological data is collected to create the athlete’s full physiological profile.

Now let’s look at each of these in more detail.

Critical Power, or the Power-Duration Relationship

The athlete does this first part autonomously before meeting with me. This helps us establish some performance metrics, informs us of the athlete’s athletic profile, and calibrates the longer step test where most physiological measurements will take place.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the notion of critical power, it’s the intensity above which you can no longer maintain your metabolic homeostasis (or internal balance). That is not to say that no fatigue is experienced below critical power, but once you cross that “threshold,” the effort simply elicits a different kind of fatigue.

To learn more about critical power, I recommend this fantastic video by Mark Burnley.

Critical power will usually be close to your best 30-minute to 60-minute power on a bike or 10k pace on a run (in which case we call it critical speed).

To find that critical power, I use a 3-minute and a 12-minute test performed on separate days, as described in this research paper. (The equivalent test for running is a 1200-meter and a 3600-meter effort done for time, as described here.)

The reason I’ve decided to use this method is simple: It’s easy to apply, and everyone can do it with virtually no equipment. If we want to increase the accuracy of the method, we can get the athlete to perform those same tests a few days later, which will help them express their full potential through better pacing. But since the primary role of this stage is to ESTIMATE critical power and calibrate the step test, I usually stick with one trial on each effort the first time around.

Once the athlete has completed their 3-minute and 12-minute efforts (or 1200-meter and 3600-meter efforts for a running test), we can calculate their critical power and W’ using their average watts at each effort.

W’ is a fixed amount of work (expressed in Joules or kJ) that one can perform above critical power. Think of it as a savings account. Below critical power, internal homeostasis is maintained (the checking account is doing its job), and the savings account isn’t needed. But once we exceed the capacity of the checking account, we have to dip into our savings. That’s W’ in a nutshell.

Image 7. Metabolic reactions above and below critical power. Adapted from Jones et al. (2008).

Knowing an athlete’s W’ can be a precious piece of information to help us plan HIIT and orient training, especially if we have such data for multiple athletes in a given sport. Given that two athletes with similar critical powers can have very different W’ values, this should be reflected in our programming and what we can expect to see in training and competition from each athlete.

So, we’ve now determined the athlete’s critical power and W’ via the 3-minute and 12-minute tests. We have gained some insights into their athletic profile (endurant vs. powerful) and can use the data collected to help us calibrate the step test.

Before we talk about the step test, how it’s built, and how to calibrate it, let’s look at why I also include a spirometry test in my protocol and what this data can add to the global picture.

Spirometry Test

Spirometry is the most common type of pulmonary function test. This test measures how much air the athlete can breathe in and out of their lungs as well as how fast they accomplish this movement.

Since we will be measuring ventilation (or how the athlete breathes) during the step test, we need to have a reference point to interpret this data. Without knowing how much lung capacity the subject possesses, it’s impossible to say whether the way they breathe is optimal or not, let alone determine what should be done about it.

In addition to helping us interpret ventilation data, the spirometry results inform us about the athlete’s lung capacity relative to their size and weight. The app comes with a database built in that enables us to compare the athlete’s data to their corresponding demographic. That way, we know if they are presenting with a respiratory capacity limitation or not.

The 4-1 Step Test

The protocol I use is an intermittent step test composed of four-minute constant load intervals interspersed with one minute of passive rest. The ideal test goes on for 9 to 11 intervals where the athlete reaches task failure at the end of the last step and is unable to start again. Note that I only care about completed intervals for reasons I’ll come back to when discussing data collection.

I settled on four-minute intervals because it’s long enough to allow for all physiological systems to reach a balance while keeping the total test time under one hour.

When we start a constant load effort, it takes between 90 and 120 seconds for the oxygen delivery (respiratory and cardiac) and utilization (metabolic) systems to find their equilibrium. By using four-minute intervals, I’m able to observe what happens to the different metrics collected in the last two minutes of each step in a balanced state.

The minute of rest allows me to take a clean lactate measurement on the athlete while also observing their heart rate and muscle oximetry recovery kinetics.

Back to calibrating the steps.

Calibrating the step test is one of the most critical parts of the system I’m presenting in this article, says @SeanSeale. Share on X

In my opinion, calibrating the step test is one of the most critical parts of the system I’m presenting in this article. Through trial and error, I’ve figured out that setting the eighth step to be equal to the CP value calculated for the athlete at hand usually works quite well. Athletes often complete two steps above their critical power, which lands us right around that “ideal” 10-step mark.

If the test is much shorter than the 10-step target, the gaps between each step might be too big, and the data collected might not give as precise a picture as we hoped. On the flip side, if the test runs for much more than 10 steps, we’re looking at a test that exceeds one hour in length. This would be suboptimal from a logistical standpoint but also in terms of accumulated fatigue for the athlete, who might not be used to these types of efforts.

The starting power of the step test will usually fall around 35% of the athlete’s calculated critical power. When testing on the bike, I also look at relative power (watts per kilogram) to pinpoint the appropriate starting power for each athlete. The spectrum of power on the first step of the test ranges from 0.5 w/kg to 1.5 w/kg, depending on the conditioning level of the athlete I’m testing. Someone completely out of shape will start at 0.5 w/kg, while an elite cyclist would use 1.5 w/kg as their first step power.

When in doubt, I get the athlete to spin on the bike at a low power until their heart rate settles at 100 beats per minute. I then use this power value at the start of the step test.

When performing a running test, I start all non-elite runners at 6–7 km/h.

As you can see, calibration isn’t an exact science, but the general rule of thumb is that the starting power should be on the low end. If we start too high, we will miss some important information about the athlete’s physiology that is pivotal in individualizing and optimizing their training.

I think it’s important to highlight that this is ONE testing protocol available among many others. Each coach needs to find the protocol that makes sense for the data they wish to collect while respecting the constraints within which they operate. Know your protocol’s strengths and weaknesses, and you will always collect better data than if you try just to grab “the best protocol” off the shelf.

Now we know HOW the test will take place. Let’s look at WHAT tools I use to collect physiological data during the 4-1 step test.

Section 3: The Measurement Tools

Over time, I’ve added different tools to my assessment arsenal.

Here, I’ll give an overview of the gear I use, what I like about it, and what kind of limitations I need to be aware of when using it.

Polar H10 Chest Strap

Heart rate data is the most accessible physiological measurement out there, and you should collect it whenever possible. In the context of building the athlete’s complete physiological profile, heart rate is a central metric to assess cardiac function and prescribe training intensities that will correspond to specific internal states.

I’ve been using the Polar H10 with great success for some time now. It’s currently the best HR belt out there relative to its price, and it has a hidden (or seldom-mentioned) feature that enables you to sync it to more than one app at a time. This can be a handy feature.

MIR Spirobank Smart

As I described earlier in the article, using a spirometer is a simple and fast way to assess an athlete’s respiratory capacity. After a couple of trials with other devices, I’ve settled on the MIR Spirobank Smart. This compact tool comes with single-use turbines for better hygiene and safety.

The dedicated mobile app requires you to input your personal information (weight, size, height, origin, etc.) so that it can compare spirometry results to its database.

VO2 Master

The VO2 Master is a fantastic piece of equipment that opens the door to measuring and analyzing ventilation and VO2 in real time without the constraints of bulky lab equipment. The VO2 Master Pro connects directly to its dedicated mobile app via Bluetooth and is calibrated through regular breathing in under two minutes. After that, you can see breath-by-breath data of oxygen consumption, respiratory frequency, and tidal volume (volume of air per breath) streamed through the app.

As mentioned in the spirometry section, knowing how someone breathes at different intensities and relative to their lung capacity helps us give specific recommendations where appropriate.

VO2 is a measure of how much oxygen the body absorbs, transports, and utilizes per unit of time. This allows us to calculate an athlete’s economy (“cost of effort”) and also determine the percentage of VO2 that is being utilized at each threshold (called fractional utilization).

VO2 measurements can also be combined with ventilation data to help pinpoint ventilatory thresholds, which we will discuss in the following section.

One weakness of the current VO2 Master unit is that it does not (yet) possess a CO2 sensor. Expired CO2 provides important information regarding substrate utilization (fats vs. carbs) as well as additional information regarding respiratory thresholds. This feature is being worked on as I write this blog post, and it is much anticipated for future testing.

Moxy Monitor

The Moxy Monitor is a NIRS device. NIRS stands for near-infrared spectroscopy, which measures the balance between oxygen delivery and oxygen utilization at the level of the muscle capillaries. This tool can be used to measure muscle oxygen saturation locally (when placed on a locomotor muscle) as well as systemically (when placed on a non-involved muscle).

When testing athletes on a bike, I often place a Moxy on each vastus lateralis (locomotor muscle group) and a Moxy on each shoulder (non-involved muscle group). For runners, the rectus femoris and the forearms are usually a great choice.

Moxy data trends show some interesting correlations with lactate and ventilation/VO2 data regarding threshold determination. More on that in the next section of the article.

A current weakness of the Moxy Monitor (along with other NIRS devices in the context of exercise physiology) is the lack of consensus surrounding the interpretation of the data collected. Although there are some exciting papers and projects in the works, more collaboration between the protagonists in this field needs to take place for a more practical application of the data to emerge.

Lactate Scout 4

The Lactate Scout 4 is a lactate analyzer. This tool measures blood lactate concentration (BLa) via a small droplet of blood taken from the athlete’s earlobe or finger, in this case, at the end of each work interval.

Contrary to common belief, lactate is not a harmful by-product of metabolism but an important fuel source and signaling molecule for the human body. An excellent summary of our current understanding of lactate can be found in this paper.

Blood lactate is the difference between the lactate produced by the body through glycolysis and the lactate recycled by our mitochondria. BLa does not give us any information on lactate production or clearance rates.

The weaknesses of lactate measurements reside primarily in the measurement procedure itself, as each blood droplet can be contaminated by sweat or skin tissue. This usually results in a BLa value much higher than expected. Another drawback of this method is the numerous interpretation methods that exist to analyze a lactate curve. This will become rather clear in the next section of this article.

Image 14. Lactate curve with possible interpretations from ExPhysLab.com.

Rating of Perceived Exertion

Despite the subjective nature of RPE, I believe it to be one of the most important metrics that a coach can collect during a training session test. As exemplified by Alex Hutchinson in his fantastic book Endure, effort perception might well be one of the most essential factors in sports performance, especially in events and disciplines practiced over longer time domains.

Despite the subjective nature of RPE, I believe it to be one of the most important metrics that a coach can collect during a training session test, says @SeanSeale. Share on X

I use a simple 1 through 10 RPE scale that includes descriptions of effort perception and respiratory status (inspired by Daniel Crumback’s work) to guide the athlete in choosing the rating that matches their sensations. It’s also a good add-on since some athletes have difficulty “listening to themselves.”

Now let’s look at what I do with the data we collect using the above tools.

Section 4: Interpreting Test Results

Once the athlete has completed the tests, it’s time to look at the collected data and, more importantly, interpret it.

From experience, I can tell you that the last thing athletes and coaches want following a physiological test is a bunch of raw data thrown at them. Instead, what they want (and what they should get) is actionable information to help them individualize, optimize, and orient training in the best way possible.

The data interpretation process is pivotal to bridging the gap between the “lab” and the “field.” Here’s how I proceed through it.

Thresholds and Intensity Distribution Interpretation

As we’ve seen in section 1, it’s important to determine an athlete’s individual intensity profile if we want the training to be practical and match the athlete’s current abilities. To do so, we have multiple data sets and methods of analysis at our disposal to define thresholds and break up the intensity spectrum into distinct domains.

What I do first is look at each data set independently from the others and figure out where the inflection points (or thresholds) are.

For lactate, I’ll use the Bsn+0.5 method for threshold 1 and the Modified DMax method for threshold 2. A great tool for this is ExPhysLab.com.

For VO2 and ventilation, I look for inflection points in their relationship, as shown below, and match them up with the correct intensities.

For the Moxy Monitor data, I look for distinct changes in trends from step to step. I also look at the non-involved muscles and how the oxygen trend behaves, which can often inform me about intensities taking place above threshold 2.

I also consider the critical power calculation as a reference for the second threshold.

Once I’ve looked at the different data points cited above, I draw my interpretation of threshold 1 and threshold 2 relative to power, heart rate, and percentage of VO2max for that athlete.

This intensity distribution profile is then cut up further into training zones to render the information as practical as possible for both the coach and the athlete.

Some might say I should stick to one metric—for example, blood lactate—and base all my interpretations on this metric alone. I think it’s a valid criticism of my approach. But at this stage, I wish not to “pick a side” or a method and simply try and make the best interpretation possible from a holistic point of view.

Physiological thresholds are NOT fixed points on the intensity spectrum; they are transition zones (not linked to training zones) where the body shifts from one internal state to another. Share on X

I’ll state it again: physiological thresholds are NOT fixed points on the intensity spectrum. Instead, they are transition zones (not linked to training zones) where the body shifts from one internal state to another. All thresholds (lactate, ventilation, etc.) do not always line up with each other, and there can even be significant differences between two methods that are supposed to illustrate the same thing (MLSS vs. critical power, for example).

This is why it’s essential to keep the big picture in mind. We also don’t want to get lost in the details—we want actionable information for the coaches and athletes we work with.

Regardless of the method(s) I choose, what remains important is to record all the interpretations I make on each system or metric available so that I can compare those interpretations at a later date after a retest. That way, even though my global interpretation might not be based on a single data point, I still know what each method “tells me” and can accurately compare it when future tests are performed.

Interpreting Heart Rate Data

As I stated earlier, heart rate is a very accessible physiological metric that should be used to inform conditioning training whenever possible.

In the case of this 4-1 step test, I average the last minute of each stage and use this value as a reference for the corresponding power output.

I also look at how fast the heart recovered during the fixed one-minute rest intervals. This can be compared in future tests.

Interpreting VO2 Data

The advantage of the VO2 Master is that it provides you with the breath-by-breath raw data that was collected. The disadvantage of the VO2 Master is that it provides you with the breath-by-breath raw data that was collected.

Let me explain…

In the world of sports technology, different companies operate in different ways when it comes to the data that their devices collect. Sometimes, you get some very actionable information but have no idea what was done to the data. Was it smoothed? How was it interpreted? What algorithms were applied? How did they deal with noise/artifacts/missing data? Who knows…

Other times, you get the raw data and have to figure out what to do with it yourself.

There obviously exists a spectrum between those two “extremes,” but it’s essential to understand what you’re dealing with to make informed decisions about the data you collect.

Personally, I like the raw data. It’s more work to process, but at least you know exactly what went into your model, what analytics you applied, and what you got out on the other side. You have complete control through and through. If you want to change the way you analyze a data stream, you can do so and re-run all your prior data through that new filter. You can’t do that when all you have is the final output.

So back to the VO2 Master data.

Before I look at the numbers, I apply a 30-second rolling average to the data set. This helps offset any significant second-to-second variations because of the breath-by-breath measurement.

As with other metrics, I then take the average value on the last 60 seconds of each work interval as my reference value for the corresponding power.

The highest VO2 value expressed during the test is called VO2peak.

Going back to understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your approach, it’s important to point out that this longer test with four-minute stages will tend to underestimate an athlete’s VO2max relative to what could be measured on a short, 9- to 12-minute step test with no breaks.

To make it easier to grasp, we can say that VO2peak is specific to the protocol that was used to achieve it. Researchers have shown that different maximal VO2 values can be elicited in the same individual by changing the test’s duration, structure, and intensity. So as long as we only compare values coming from the same testing protocol, in the same conditions, and using the same measurement devices, we can have a high degree of confidence in our analysis.

Since I work with different athletic profiles (CrossFitters, combat sports athletes, endurance athletes, etc.) across many levels, I see a wide range of VO2peak values on those tests. I’m starting to see trends and know what to expect for each category of athlete, but it wouldn’t be wise, in my opinion, to compare the VO2peak of a fighter to that of a cyclist, even if they both performed their tests on a bike.

In the case of a cyclist, I would like to see a high VO2 value in the last stage, which would be a good indicator of performance potential. But for a fighter, since there isn’t a strong correlation between VO2peak on a bike and sports performance, I might instead want to see a large enough value to allow for sufficient work capacity overall.

That said, VO2peak is not necessarily the most interesting metric related to oxygen uptake.

Some might argue that it’s even more interesting to look at the percentage of VO2peak that is manifested at each threshold. Relative VO2 at thresholds 1 and 2 are important fitness metrics that can help guide and individualize the training process for each athlete relative to their needs.

These values should be tracked and will help us assess an athlete’s progress over time. Think of this as a “how many reps can I do at 80% of my 1RM squat” equivalent for endurance sports. In the endurance world, the higher the percentage of VO2peak you express at each threshold, the better.

Now that we’ve looked at VO2peak and fractional VO2, let’s look at spirometry and ventilation data.

Spirometry Results

There are three main metrics of interest provided by any standard spirometer: FVC6, FEV1, and FEV1/FVC6.

FVC6 stands for Forced Vital Capacity in six seconds. It is expressed in liters (L) and tells us “how much space” the athlete has available in their lungs. In short, their respiratory capacity.

FEV1 stands for Forced Expiratory Volume in the first second of the exhale. It is also expressed in liters, giving us a measure of expiratory power (thanks to Daniel Crumback for that term).

FEV1/FVC6 is the ratio between those two values (expressed in %) and gives us an idea of how one compares to the other. Is your capacity low relative to your expiratory power? Or vice versa?

The results are then compared to the standard tables. For athletes, I like to see FVC and FEV above 110% of the predicted norm. For non-athletic clients, 100% works well as a separator between “good” and “not good enough.”

While respiratory training falls outside the scope of this article, there are definitely some interesting interventions and tools that can be used to address respiratory capacity limitations.

Next, let’s link respiratory capacity to respiratory coordination. Here, we want to assess whether the athlete is actually using their capacity effectively. To do so, I calculate 80% of the athlete’s measured FEV1 score. This is the volume that they should theoretically be able to “move” with each breath during a dynamic effort.

For example, if my FEV1 is 5L, I should manage to get 4 liters of air in and out of my lungs with each breath during the step test. With this, I can now look at the ventilation data collected and assess whether the breathing performed was optimal or not.

Ventilation Data

Ventilation from the VO2 Master provides us with two direct measurements and one calculated value: respiratory frequency (RF) expressed in breaths per minute, tidal volume (VT) expressed in liters, and ventilatory exchange (VE) expressed in liters per minute, respectively.

Since we don’t often speak of those values, we can draw a simple parallel with the heart.

Respiratory frequency is the equivalent of heart rate, tidal volume is the equivalent of stroke volume, and ventilatory exchange is the equivalent of cardiac output.

Throughout the step test, we should see a progressive increase in respiratory frequency (to match the intensity) while VT stays relatively high and constant, close to that 80% FEV1 mark I mentioned earlier.

There are multiple reasons I like to see this pattern of breathing.

Breathing Deep and Slow

First, breathing high tidal volumes allows the lungs to be completely filled with fresh air through each breath cycle. Compared to shallow breathing, this means that we can increase the exchange surface between the alveoli and the capillaries, where the oxygen passes into the bloodstream.

Second, high tidal volume breathing requires optimal diaphragmatic excursion (or range of motion). In almost all cases, this should be prioritized over “thoracic breathing,” which mainly recruits accessory breathing muscles. These are nowhere near as powerful or enduring as the diaphragm.

And lastly, breathing deeply and slowly will tend to increase CO2 retention. So, each minute, less CO2 is expelled, and the CO2 levels inside the body increase slightly.

The effect this has is very interesting.

In short, more CO2 retention means that your hemoglobin becomes less “sticky” to oxygen. In that way, the unloading of oxygen at the muscle (in the capillaries) is facilitated, and a higher fraction of the oxygen entering the body is actually utilized.

We know that O2 availability in the muscle directly influences substrate utilization. It has been recently discovered that oxymyoglobin (or myoglobin bound to oxygen) facilitates the transport and oxidation of fatty acids. Maybe something to explore regarding breathing efficiency?

Lastly, it’s important to realize that respiratory frequency is tightly linked to our rating of perceived exertion. By controlling one’s breathing and slowing it down, not only will you experience the benefits listed above, but you will also make your efforts FEEL easier.

It’s important to realize that respiratory frequency is tightly linked to our RPE. By controlling and slowing down our breathing, we will make our efforts FEEL easier, says @SeanSeale. Share on X

As we know, our perception IS our reality. So why not make our reality during exercise just a little bit less painful than it actually is by breathing slower and deeper?

Respiratory Coordination

Sometimes, the athlete can maintain tidal volume at lower intensities but loses coordination at higher intensities.

When an athlete presents with a respiratory pattern that deviates significantly from the expected standards I outlined above, I take it as an opportunity to open up a conversation with them about how they breathe, how they feel relative to their breath during exercise, and what can potentially be done to improve their awareness, control, and/or coordination.

I often recommend that athletes work with a respiratory training tool such as the Breathe Way Better to improve their movement (or “breathing technique,” if you will), their coordination (maintaining VT at all intensities), and their endurance.

Image 24. Ironman U24 2022 World Champion Jameson Plewes training with the Breathe Way Better.

Now that we’ve looked at both spirometry and ventilation, let’s do a quick overview of what we can expect from muscle oximetry data provided by the Moxy Monitor (or any other NIRS device).

Muscle Oximetry Data

The Moxy Monitor provides us with two metrics: SmO2 and THb. We will focus on SmO2 today, which stands for muscle oxygen saturation.

SmO2 is expressed on a 0 to 100% scale and indicates the balance between oxygen delivery and utilization. The absolute numbers are influenced by adipose tissue thickness, so it’s best to focus on trends rather than the numbers themselves. In short, is the trend going up, staying stable, or going down? And how is that changing over the course of the test?

As I mentioned above, I use the Moxy data mainly to pinpoint my threshold 1 and threshold 2. When I test sports other than cycling or running, it’s also a good opportunity to analyze specific task demands and see what muscle groups are involved and to what degree.

Now that we’ve looked at how I interpret the data collected, here’s an example of the test report I provide to both coaches and athletes.

We’ve seen the results and how I communicate them to athletes and coaches, so let’s look at how I orient the programming for different athletes and needs.

Building the Training Plan

This is where the rubber meets the road. Test results are great, but if you don’t know what to do with them, they won’t be much use to you or the athletes you’re working with.

How to Set Training Priorities 

“What should we do next” is always the big question following a test of any kind.

To answer, we need more information than what the test alone can provide.

To determine what we should do next, we need more information than what the test can provide. That’s why I always send athletes a questionnaire to fill out before our testing session, says @SeanSeale. Share on X

That’s why I always send athletes a questionnaire to fill out before our testing session. The information that will help me strengthen my decision-making process regarding the planification of training includes:

• What are the athlete’s perceived strengths?
• What are the athlete’s perceived weaknesses?
• What sport do they compete in?
• When is their next competitive event taking place?
• How much time do they dedicate to training each week?
• How do they distribute their training intensity across sessions?
• What type of conditioning training have they been doing recently?
• What type of conditioning training have they not done in a while (>3 months)?

With these questions answered, I already have a good idea of what the athlete will NEED next, regardless of their test results (that might be less true for elite athletes who have already been following a well-thought-out and balanced training plan for years).

Just as I did when interpreting the thresholds earlier, I’ll look first at what their questionnaire says and second at what their physiological profile indicates. Then, I can cross-reference the two to decide what training intervention they should go through next.

Programming Conditioning Training for CrossFit Athletes

Since this is the primary demographic I currently work with, I’ll focus on CrossFit athletes for a moment as an example.

The sport itself (or at least the way in which most competitive CrossFit events are currently built) centers around a time domain between about 3 minutes and 20 minutes of intense effort. This usually involves different movement patterns and exercises organized in varying ways from event to event.

If we leave aside max strength/weightlifting lifts and pure gymnastic events, this means that, from a cardiovascular and metabolic standpoint, CrossFit LIVES in the upper Heavy and Severe domains (or in zones 4 and 5).

And it turns out that the conditioning training performed by most CrossFit competitors also falls in that time domain and intensity range.

So naturally, those athletes will greatly benefit from exploring training intensities and durations that they don’t use much (if at all).

As Alex Hutchinson said in a podcast I recorded with him, “the best stimulus is the one you never had.” I would add “and/or the one you haven’t had in a while.”

Video 1. Upside Strength podcast with Alex Hutchinson.

Put simply, if there are gaps in your conditioning that need to be filled, you will do well to work on those first. A training intensity you haven’t worked on in a long time (or ever) is bound to yield significant returns in the early stages of training without requiring too much volume to achieve it.

In line with that thinking, I often program some longer efforts for CrossFitters who are deficient in this area (tempo + threshold training). For those who display a real lack of power or intensity tolerance, sprint interval training (both short and long sprints) can be a potent and beneficial intervention.

The intensities are obviously individualized based on the test results and feedback on the first few sessions via heart rate and RPE monitoring, allowing us to make sure they are training at the intensities that we wanted to target in the first place.

Another staple absent from most CrossFitters’ training plans is low-intensity continuous training, also called “Zone 2” training. As a brief reminder, zone 2 is located below the first threshold and is characterized by low blood lactate levels (usually close or equal to resting levels), very easy breathing, and a parasympathetic-dominant state. This low-intensity training serves as the BASE for all the higher intensities expressed in training and competition.

Some common feedback I get from athletes who start including this type of training in their weekly training:

• Better sleep.
• Better recovery between sessions.
• Better recovery between work sets.
• Better tolerance of overall training volume/intensity.
• Better intensity performance.

Those adaptations usually take 8–12 weeks to manifest themselves with as little as one to two hours of Zone 2 training per week.

Tracking Progress over Time

After the training block is completed (usually between 8 and 16 weeks later), it’s time to assess the athlete’s progress.

Some might come back from a complete profile immediately, although there are ways to quantify their evolution without needing all the measurement tools.

I’ll then have the athlete redo their 3-minute and 12-minute efforts and recalculate their critical power. From there, they can also do the step test again while just measuring heart rate and RPE. I can then compare their HR and RPE data to what I had initially collected to detect meaningful changes in their intensity profile and adjust the following training sessions accordingly.

Case Studies

Here are a few examples of the progress different athletes have achieved following these ideas and training interventions.

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF

“What is the most effective way to make an athlete more powerful?” This was the question that sparked the idea to conduct a case study among our male multisport high school athletes. We chose to compare two methods that both fall under the “dynamic effort” umbrella. The first was a more traditional means of training for power, using bands for accommodating resistance. The second method was a more novel training method, launching the bar using a self-spotting rack called the XPT half rack. (Check out a full review of the XPT here.)

These two methods allowed us to program the same movements with the same volume of sets and reps, as opposed to other methods (such as contrast training) that would make it more difficult to ensure equivalent volume between groups. We also chose not to use any Olympic lifts or their derivatives since they are different movements altogether.

The question ‘what is the most effective way to make an athlete more powerful?’ sparked the idea to conduct this case study on two dynamic effort methods of training, says @Brandon_L_Pigg. Share on X

When discussing training methods, it is difficult to truly say one is better than the other. There is always an argument from silence that even if you saw better results using one set of methods one year than you did with other techniques in previous years, you cannot say that one is definitively better than the other since other external factors may have influenced the outcomes.

This problem is the foundation of all research. It is also why we wanted to conduct this case study and see which method would yield better results when all other external factors were equal. While this case study does not meet the standards of peer-reviewed literature—as I will discuss in the methods section below—it does show reasonable expectations for results between the two methods.

It should be noted that while the overall format of this article will be similar to that of a peer-reviewed research paper, I am leaving room to inject my own opinions and experiences alongside the data since this was an informal, in-house case study.

Background

With the increased accessibility to technology that allows for velocity-based training (with devices such as the Vmaxpro and GymAware), many coaches have begun to pay closer attention to dynamic effort training methods. Training for power typically involves:

• Moving a lighter load fast, with or without accommodating resistance like bands or chains.
• Ballistic methods with lighter implements such as medicine balls or weighted balls.
• The use of weightlifting movements and their variations.

Some heavier ballistic methods are also common, such as a barbell jump squat or trap bar jump. Of the two, the trap bar jump is probably preferable because the barbell squat jump has a component of dynamic spinal loading during the landing. There also aren’t any common means for upper-body ballistic barbell movements. While heavier ballistic methods were previously limited in number, accommodating resistance has historically been a popular option due to its association with Westside Barbell and its low-cost barrier to entry.

One of the main proposed benefits of using the XPT trainer: you can accelerate throughout the entire range of motion and ballistically launch the bar instead of slowing it down, says @Brandon_L_Pigg. Share on X

While accommodating resistance has shown solid results for barbell lifts, some coaches feel that since you have to eventually decelerate at the end range of motion of the lift, you are actually teaching the brain to do the opposite of what it does during natural movements like sprinting or jumping. This is one of the main proposed benefits of using the XPT trainer: you can accelerate throughout the entire range of motion and ballistically launch the bar instead of slowing it down. If you would like to read more about what training with the XPT looks like, you can view some demonstrations here.

Methods

Recruitment and Selection

This is one area where we deviated from standard research operating procedures. Under normal circumstances, participants would have shown interest after being recruited and joined the study at their own discretion. Groups would have either been completely randomized, or they would have been formed so that, after pre-testing, the average metrics between both groups would be similar.

As a former research assistant, I fully understand the need for randomization to avoid bias or juicing one group’s results over the other. As a high school strength and conditioning coach, I’ll plead my argument for why we didn’t do this.

Under normal research circumstances, participants in a study like this would be recreational athletes at best and, at worst, couch potatoes who knew you needed more participants. This allows the researchers to set standards that any exercise or training during the duration of the study should be limited to, or non-conflicting with, the training done within the training intervention sessions. With high school athletes, this is not the case. As for recruitment, it’s hard to set exclusion criteria that say, “Naw, bruh, we can’t trust you.”

In the high school setting, the bandwidth of maturity has a wide span. We chose to hand-select 14 male athletes who had multiple years of training experience and whom we felt were all capable of completing the study with good effort and good attendance. Instead of randomizing them, we chose to separate them so that both groups had an equal number of athletes in in-season sports, off-season sports, or preparing for college athletics. While we could have tagged each of them with one of the variables and randomized from there, we chose hand selection because the athletes trained during different class times, and we wanted to ensure there was enough rack availability for each class. Not being able to limit these extracurriculars was a limitation of this case study, but balancing each group was the closest we could come to washing these variables out.

Pre- and Post-Testing

Both pre-testing and post-testing were conducted on the XPT half rack using a Vmaxpro to capture bar speed metrics. The metrics collected for analysis were peak power, average power, peak velocity, and average velocity. Metrics were collected on a bench press launch at 40% and 60% of bench press one rep max (1RM) and on a box squat launch with 60% of back squat 1RM. Percentages were selected to be between the traditionally accepted peak power range of 40% and 60% 1RM. The pre-testing was conducted after one week of familiarization with launching the bar on both bench presses and box squat jumps.

In testing, each participant completed two repetitions (reps) of the bench press launch at 60%, followed by two reps of the bench press launch at 40%, and then finally two reps of the box squat launch at 60% 1RM. As each rep was completed, I collected results on a data sheet for each subject (figure 1).

Intervention Design

Each group trained in class as usual (twice a week for 60 minutes). Lifting sessions were conducted after a dynamic warm-up, resisted sprints, medicine ball throws, hurdle hops, and three 15-yard sprints, which was the training format for the preceding five months leading up to the study. Both groups were given a one-week introductory period before pre-testing. This allowed the athletes to familiarize themselves with the XPT and what it feels like to actually launch a barbell on a bench press or squat.

This familiarization period was essential, as some athletes were initially tentative and needed time to trust the machine. The banded group always used a red Westside Barbell band anchored, so the bench press was approximately 60 pounds higher than the bar weight at the top, and lower-body movements were around 100 pounds higher than the bar weight at the top. Individual differences may have occurred due to height or limb length.

The lifting protocols for each group were as follows (sets and reps are listed as sets x reps):

Banded Group

Day One:

Banded Bench Press

• 40% Bench Press 1RM 3 x 3

Banded Box Squat

• 40% Back Squat 1RM 3 x 3

Chin-ups

• Body weight 2 x 2–3 reps in reserve

Landmine RDL with Viking Press attachment

• 8–12 reps with two 45-pound plates loaded on the bar

Day Two:

Banded Bench Press

• 60% Bench Press 1RM 3 x 3

Banded Split Squat

• 40% Back Squat 1RM 3 x 3

TRX Rows

• Body weight 2 x 8–12 reps

Dumbbell RDL

• Weight that allows 2 x 6–8 reps for each leg with 2–3 reps in reserve

XPT Group

Day One:

Bench Press Launch

• 60% Bench Press 1RM 3 x 3

Split Squat Launch

• 60% Back Squat 1RM 3 x 3

TRX Rows

• Body weight 2 x 8–12 reps

Dumbbell RDL

• Weight that allows 2 x 6–8 reps for each leg with 2–3 reps in reserve

Day Two:

Bench Press Launch

• 45% Bench Press 1RM 3 x 3

Box Squat Launch

• 45% Back Squat 1RM 3 x 3

Chin-ups

• Body weight 2 x 2–3 reps in reserve

Landmine RDL with Viking Press attachment

• 8–12 reps with two 45-pound plates loaded on the bar

For the XPT group, percentages were selected to match the average velocity of banded movements using pilot data conducted with the Vmaxpro. These two days were repeated using the same loads for the duration of the study, which was four weeks long.

Exclusion Criteria and Dropouts

The criteria for being excluded from the study without completion were as follows:

• Poor attendance resulting in fewer than six completed sessions over the four weeks of training.
• Injury.

Each group began the intervention with seven subjects. Three subjects were excluded from post-testing due to attendance, one was excluded for an injury, and one dropped out due to a college strength coach requesting he start doing a new workout program in class. This left the Banded group with five participants who completed post-testing and the XPT group with four participants who completed post-testing.

Statistical Analysis

P-values were calculated using Google Sheets’ T-Test function. We used a paired samples t-test. This is input with the function =TTEST(Range 1,Range 2,2,1). Range 1 is the pre-test values; range 2 is the post-test values; the “2” means it is a two-tailed test; and the “1” selects a paired samples t-test.

Results

The results were as follows. Power metrics are reported in watts. Velocity metrics are recorded in meters per second. Statistically significant measures (p-value < 0.05) are highlighted in yellow.

Statistical Significance

Percent Change Pre/Post

Discussion

The results were a tale of two different beasts. Both groups saw solid improvements in some or all bench metrics. Neither group saw meaningful improvements in the box squat metrics. While only six total metrics had a p-value < 0.05 across both groups, I would focus on percent changes from pre/post.

Given that these athletes completed 6–8 sessions, seeing changes of this magnitude in the timeframe equivalent of a single block of training is quite impressive, says @Brandon_L_Pigg. Share on X

Looking at the percent changes, I think any reasonable strength coach would say that the XPT group saw meaningful improvements in all metrics for the bench press, and the Banded group saw significant improvements in average metrics for the bench press. On each of the metrics, the XPT group had between a 25.54% and 48.79% change in both the 40% and 60% 1RM bench press launch. While the Banded group did not do nearly as well in peak metrics for the bench press, it saw impressive jumps in the average categories with percent changes between 26.03% and 56.69%. Given that these athletes completed between six and eight sessions, seeing changes of this magnitude in the timeframe equivalent of a single block of training is quite impressive.

As for the box squat launch, the XPT group effectively saw no difference aside from average power, and the Banded group saw small changes in power. There are a few potential reasons for this discrepancy between the bench and squat results. As a whole, the previous training probably develops lower body power more so than upper body power. The only real upper body power work we did in previous blocks was medball work and landmine jerks. With all the sprinting, resisted sprinting, and jumping we do, there was likely just less room to develop lower body power than there was for upper body power.

As to why I think the XPT group performed worse on the squat compared to the Banded group, I think it may have been in part to some of the kids having experience with the rack. The half rack is not as tall as the full rack version of the XPT rack. You have about 6 feet of space from top to bottom, which leads to the bar smacking the top of the rack on any type of jump with a bar on your back or in a rack position.

There were also a handful of incidents where kids just locked up and death-gripped the bar, preventing the catching mechanism from engaging and letting the bar freefall after the jump. I believe this could have resulted in some hesitancy to go all-out in both training and post-testing. I think this issue is easily avoided with the full rack.

The XPT brand is also in the process of releasing adaptor kits that can fit onto common brands of power racks, allowing you to have self-spotting capabilities on your current racks. Given the XPT group’s results in the bench press, I would have definitely liked to have conducted the study on one of these taller models to test if my hypothesis of hesitancy is correct.

Future case studies should potentially consider having a Banded XPT group to see how adding accommodating resistance to a ballistic launch could impact testing outcomes. It should also be noted that the brake handles on the XPT increase the diameter of the bar by about 0.5 inches. To equate this, the banded group should use an equivalently sized Fat Gripz-type device on all upper body lifts to tease out any effects that could come from a different bar size.

Given the large response on bench press metrics, it could also be worthwhile to run an initial block using neither ballistic nor accommodating methods. This would provide measures to eliminate any murkiness as to whether or not previous programming simply failed to address upper or lower body power and left a higher or lower ceiling for development.

While this is just pilot data in a small cohort of participants, I believe there are a few practical takeaways. First, each coach should occasionally perform a SWOT analysis of their weight room and what they are and aren’t able to train. (A SWOT analysis means to look for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that all need to be addressed.) My approach to programming is to always attempt to invest time in exercises that will give the athletes the biggest return on their effort investment. Your time, space, equipment, and other logistical restraints will always determine much of what you can do, but this is why the SWOT analysis is so critical for each coach to perform instead of copying and pasting another coach or program’s training.

As I mentioned, since we performed sprints and resisted sprints year-round, our lower body power may have already been one of our strengths. While medicine ball training and landmine jerks are great for a number of reasons, it is clear that there was a significant opportunity to improve vertical pressing power in our athletes.

SWOT analysis is so critical for each coach to perform instead of copying and pasting another coach or program’s training, says @Brandon_L_Pigg. Share on X

I have moved on to a new school this current school year, which has impacted my programming. We do not have Exer-genies or other means of performing resisted sprints on our speed days. This means that there may be an opportunity and need to increase lower body power through other means, so we have incorporated more speed squats, split squat jumps, trap bar jumps, and trap bar speed pulls in our training.

Recognizing that upper body horizontal pressing power was already a big opportunity in the previous setting, I suspect it will be even more so at my new school. We do not have bands or a good space to throw medicine balls, so speed bench and more frequent jerk/push press variations have been integrated into our training. Those programming methods reflect the restraints of our program.

Some methods may be more efficient at yielding results than others, and acquiring the means to perform them should impact how you budget and allocate funds once you’ve identified weaknesses, opportunities, or threats to your current programming. This is an ever-evolving process for all coaches, and I hope case studies like this one will help us all grow in that process.

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF

Every ambitious trainer seeks to maximize athlete adaptation within a given training period. There is no crystal ball that reveals exactly which stimuli an athlete needs to reach their true potential, but the pursuit of such understanding is our great endeavor, and coaches will never stop trying to determine which interventions to implement to get the most from training.

Several athlete-profiling techniques have emerged in response to this quest, such as force-velocity profiling, load-velocity profiling, and more. These assessments are valuable, but the trouble is that most practitioners rely solely on one or two of these profiles to guide training.

Indeed, a profile is just that: a profile. Police create a criminal profile with facts about the perp—like height, weight, crime committed, etc.—but that doesn’t tell them where to search or how to capture the target.

Profiles are not inherently descriptive of what to do next: they are simply a snapshot of the current state of existence of a specific performance factor, like jumping, sprinting, or even basic biometrics. To truly have a sense of what an athlete needs to develop maximally in the coming training cycle, we must analyze and understand several layers via broad and encompassing data collection. Such an audit consists of several performance factors, including—but standing distinct from—siloed profiles.

The beauty of data is that it tells a story. The challenge is deciphering what that story is and how we interpret it to benefit the individual for whom it is told.

Athlete auditing captures this story and allows strength coaches to write the next pages.

Those who adapt and use auditing will ride the wave of athlete improvement and rise to the top of the field. The rest will be left “testing” to determine progress. They will miss out on the insights to be gleaned and the practical applications to be realized from assembling a holistic athlete audit.

Athlete Auditing: The Next Wave of Assessment

Knowing an athlete has poor initial acceleration is a great start. But coupling that knowledge with the understanding that they have insufficient ankle stiffness, adequate hip strength, subpar plantarflexion power, and a poor broad jump arms you with a more complete picture of why their initial acceleration is below standard and what to do about it.

Strength and performance coaches have been testing athletes for ages. Testing provides a snapshot of performance and isn’t without value, but beyond simply showing changes from the previous test period, there is not much to be gleaned from a vertical jump or fly run score in isolation. That data doesn’t reveal what the athlete’s training needs are from there.

Testing provides a snapshot of performance and isn’t without value, but the data doesn’t reveal what the athlete’s training needs are from there. Auditing bridges that gap, says @KD_KyleDavey. Share on X

Auditing bridges that gap. It demonstrates strengths, weaknesses, and connections between physical qualities and performance outcomes like sprint speeds, kinematics, and jump height. More importantly, auditing generates insights into how and why an athlete does or does not perform well, highlighting low-hanging fruit and weak links that can be addressed in training.

Indeed, understanding the factors that produce the major KPIs, like sprint speed and jump height, is critical for improving these KPIs.

Advanced practitioners have evolved and are asking advanced questions: Why do these athletes perform (or not perform) well in these areas? What stimuli do they need to improve most? What training methods can I employ to deliver such stimuli? 

Athlete auditing enables coaches to answer these questions confidently, directing training and maximizing results. Particularly for those working in the team setting, not compiling complete, holistic athlete audits is a lost opportunity.

Auditing is here to stay, and it will only grow in depth, application, and efficacy. In this article, I propose a framework for constructing a working athlete audit.

Audit Considerations: What Contributes to Performance?

When considering how to construct an audit, the guiding question should be, “what qualities contribute to athletic performance?” This will vary from sport to sport and position to position, as an offensive lineman has different KPIs than a wideout, but there are certain commonalities among sports.

When considering how to construct an audit, the guiding question should be ‘what qualities contribute to athletic performance?’, says @KD_KyleDavey. Share on X

It is worth noting that assessments do not need to look like or resemble the sport itself to be relevant. Rather, an assessment aims to quantify a quality that transfers to sports performance. Where many test options exist to quantify a single quality, it is wise to choose those that resemble the sport the closest (a running versus swimming repeat sprint test for soccer players, for example). The age-old argument of “my athletes never do X, Y, or Z on the field, so why test it?” is not a valid position.

The goal of an audit is to build a holistic composition of the critical factors that influence sport performance. Matt Van Dyke proposed six qualities that encapsulate the energy and force production systems, providing a solid framework for physical performance. From a big-picture perspective, we can classify physical contributors as follows:

• Strength
• Power
• Speed
• Endurance

Each quality is composed of subcategories that together constitute the overarching theme. For instance, endurance can be separated into aerobic and anaerobic components, and those can be further broken down into subcategories of their own.

The goal of an audit is to build a holistic composition of the critical factors that influence sport performance, says @KD_KyleDavey. Share on X

Each subcategory is fair game to be assessed. When deciding whether to assess the quality, you must weigh the time involved, its relevance to sports performance, and the potential payoff from improving the quality if it is lacking. Certainly, not everything that can be included should be.

Nonetheless, practitioners should seek to quantify these outputs directly, as well as their relevant constituents, to tell the story of how performance in the major KPIs is achieved in the first place.

Further, we must recognize that physical qualities underpin technical components of sports actions. This becomes immediately recognizable when working with youth athletes who don’t yet have much strength at their disposal. They simply can’t hit the archetypal sprint kinematic postures because they don’t have the strength and power to do so. Maintaining a relatively neutral pelvis at max speed and achieving an elegant negative step are perhaps two of the more challenging sprint tasks—at least two of those which require a great deal of strength to achieve.

Assessment Considerations

Below is a basic list of “non-negotiables” that should be assessed in field and court sports athletes. Special considerations are included later in this article as well.

• Sprint performance and kinematic outcomes
• Sprint-specific range of motion
• Power
• Jump performance
• Elasticity
• Aerobic fitness

Examples of how each quality may be assessed are provided below.

Sprint Performance Determinants and Outcomes

Beyond simple split times, what do you consider valuable descriptors of sprint performance? More importantly, what do you believe are the determinants of sprint outcomes? These are the variables to capture and report.

Many are inclined to report data regarding sprint force-velocity profiling (FVP), such as F0, V0, and the slope of the curve. Perhaps rightfully so. A growing body of research supports the use of this method to individualize training for greater speed improvements.

Gathering and reporting such metrics is fine and not time-consuming—but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that sprint FVP is not without contention.

Dr. Peter Weyand, a renowned sprint and speed researcher, discussed his beliefs on why force-velocity profiling is a flawed method on the Pacey Performance Podcast. His biomechanical rationale is sound, and he presents a different perspective on why the method may not be the best way to characterize sprint performance.

Carl Valle has also presented perspectives on why the method may fail to deliver.

Regardless of your beliefs about sprint force-velocity profiling, many practitioners implement the method and claim to have success, so reporting those metrics may be of value if the strength coaches and sports scientists of the team you’re working with value those outputs.

Sport-Specific Speed Outcomes

Understanding general physical outputs like speed and power is valuable, but sport- and play-specific metrics are game-changing for sports coaches.

Readers of this article are likely well aware that acceleration and maximum velocity are related but distinct qualities. The best accelerator does not always boast the fastest top speed and vice versa. A 4.4-second 40-yard dash is impressive but not descriptive of how the athlete achieves such a time.

Using American football as an example, certain plays rely more on initial acceleration while others rely more on maximum speed. A three-step slant, for instance, has little to no relationship with top speed, but a deep dig or drag, a post, and a fade certainly do.

There is immense value in knowing which players have the best physical skill set to execute each route. Savvy offensive coordinators match particular plays with particular players, understanding which play types are best suited for which players. This understanding has traditionally been based on the coach’s intuition, eyes during practice, and film review, but the modern coach also utilizes data to support decision-making.

Hence, knowing which receiver has the fastest velocity at one, three, and five seconds post-snap is information that can alter game plans, personnel packages, and play calling.

Further, momentum at 3 yards and 5 yards is highly applicable for linemen, as it essentially quantifies how much force they deliver—in other words, how hard they hit—to that which they run into, be it a linebacker or defensive lineman. This is valuable information when considering who to pull to kick out the monstrous defensive end.

Other sporting examples include time from ball contact to first base, maximum dribbling speed in soccer, and track-specific metrics like time to and distance at the onset of maximum velocity and deceleration in a 100-meter sprint.

When determining what to assess, we are limited only by the imagination and depth of intimacy with each sport.

Sprint Kinematics

As sprint performance is, at simplest, determined by the relationship between kinetics and kinematics, assessing kinematics is critical.

There are several resources available on sprint kinematics, from Ralph Mann’s seminal work to the Tom Tellez and Carl Lewis book to online courses now readily available. Regarding the mechanics of capturing and analyzing video, I’ve previously written about performing an effective analysis, and Derek Hansen dedicates a complete section of his level one “Running Mechanics Professional” online course to Carl Valle, in which he discusses video capture and analysis in great detail.

While I can generate a whole report solely on kinematics, it is appropriate primarily for competitive sprinters fighting for milliseconds. That level of granularity is overkill for team sport athletes, who benefit most from ensuring the “big rocks” are in place. The time spent shaving a blink off a sprint via kinematic changes is best spent elsewhere for these athletes—whether in the weight room, practicing the sport itself, or otherwise.

Once the most critical kinematic components are in place, there’s no need to hyperfocus on minutia as one would with a spiked-up sprinter.

Having gone through a few iterations of sprint reports, I’ve learned to “trim the fat” and focus on the most coachable and relevant metrics: contact distance, contact and flight time, femur position at toe-off and maximum flexion, and a few other key KPIs, including step length and frequency.

The marriage of step length and frequency is, after all, the literal definition of speed.

An athlete with strong frequency but poor step length is telling when considering what variables to modify to increase speed. Clearly, this athlete calls for increased force expression without negatively affecting the neuromuscular “wiring” and decreasing frequency.

Likewise, an athlete with adequate step length but poor cycling will benefit from increased step frequency.

Lastly, we cannot look at any single metric in a vacuum. Say frequency is high—in the 4.5–5 steps-per-second range—but flight time is around 0.1 seconds or less. You can also bet that contact distance (distance between the point of contact of the foot upon touchdown and the center of mass) is too far, and I’d wager a good sum of money that maximum femur flexion is limited as well.

This athlete likely has very little vertical displacement and scuffles down the field rather than bouncing or gliding while sprinting. Flight time is often the tide that raises all boats, and trading a bit of frequency for increased step length may actually increase speed in this case.

Sprint Load-Velocity Profiling

Access to and understanding of resisted sprints has deepened significantly over the last decade. Moving the discussions from pounds on the sled (without controlling for surface friction, at that) to velocity decrement (the percent decrease in speed that a given load induces) was a giant leap forward in the application of resisted sprinting. Matt Cross’s work highlighting that maximum power is achieved at the load that produces a 50% velocity decrement created a platform for varying loads to be analyzed in research.

The 1080 Sprint upgraded the resisted sprint market (and assisted/overspeed sprints as well). The machine provides what harnesses and bungees cannot: precise, controllable resistance and objective data. Practitioners who enjoy taking a scientific and thorough approach love the 1080.

The unit also automates load-velocity profiling (see this piece by Matt Tometz for a thorough breakdown). This is crucial because, without a device like the 1080 Sprint or Dynaspeed, load-velocity profiles must be done via video analysis or radar/laser outputs and a little bit of Excel magic.

If you don’t have a 1080 Sprint or Dynaspeed, I don’t recommend completing a sprint load-velocity profile, as it takes too much time. If you do have access to these devices, do it, because it does add insightful data.

Stronger athletes can sprint against heavier weights faster than weaker ones. Stronger athletes (relative to body weight) also tend to have faster starting speeds, realized in 0–5-yard and 0–10-yard sprint times.

How fast an athlete can sprint with weight is evidence in the detective process of figuring out what stimulus they need to improve the most. For instance, if your audit reveals an athlete with slow starting speeds and poor sprint performance against heavy loads (meaning a high-velocity decrement comes at a relatively low load), part of the solution is likely heavy resisted sprints coupled with strength work in the weight room.

On the flip side, if the athlete can sprint relatively fast against heavy loads yet has poor starting speed, the issue is likely technical or related to the strength-to-size ratio (big athletes, like offensive linemen, fall into this category). If the audit also reveals poor kinematics in the first seven steps, then you’ve made a strong case for biasing training time toward technical interventions.

Beyond these insights, load-velocity profiles provide valuable training guidelines. Knowing what loads produce maximal power allows coaches to train at, above, or below that threshold with targeted interventions. Likewise, in the case above in which heavy resisted sprints are recommended, a sprint LVP reveals exactly what load constitutes heavy with razor-like precision, allowing for clear programming and targeted adaptations.

Range of Motion

Consider the major moving joints (as opposed to remaining stable) involved in sprinting: the ankle, knee, hip, and shoulder. Most people are not limited by shoulder flexion or extension range of motion, although I do wonder aloud how poor scapular mechanics affect the sprinting gait cycle.

Nonetheless, before asking athletes to maintain proper frontside mechanics, we ought to make sure such ranges of motion are available to them—specifically, hip extension. Poor hip extensibility could shift athletes into backside mechanics via an anterior pelvic tilt in order to achieve adequate femur position at toe-off.

Furthermore, knee extension ROM from a flexed hip position is critical, as it emulates hamstring mobility demands during the flight phase. It seems evident that limited knee extension range of motion from this position may be a risk factor for hamstring injury.

The Jurdan Test is a great option for assessing both hip and knee extension in a sprint-specific position.

I wrote about the Jurdan test here; you can review that article for detailed instructions on administering and scoring the test.

Dorsiflexion is also a critical factor in sprint performance. During mid-stance, as the center of mass travels over the foot, the foot should remain in complete contact with the ground. Premature elevation of the heel, which could happen if dorsiflexion is limited and the end range of motion is met, limits the stretch-shortening cycle of the Achilles tendon and results in less propulsive forces generated from the foot complex.

In other words, poor dorsiflexion range of motion likely makes you slower and addressing it could make athletes faster.

Assessing ankle ROM is thus of value. A simple way to do so is with an iPhone or a goniometer.

A shin angle of 40 degrees is the minimum we’d like to see here. A shin angle of 45 to 50 degrees is a more comfortable range of motion to work from.

Of note—I believe that the Goldilocks effect is in play here. Too little range of motion is limiting for obvious reasons, but too much flexibility is likely maladaptive as well. Approaching an end range likely facilitates part of the stretch-shortening cycle and may help prevent dangerous positions from being achieved. These mobility screens are effective ways to quantify the range of motion to be sure athletes are in a healthy zone.

Weight Room Profiling

Although you wouldn’t know it by logging on to Twitter, I believe the majority of coaches share mostly similar views on weight room training for athletes. The debate over whether a power clean or trap bar jump is superior stems from a fundamental agreement that power training is valuable. Without that underlying agreement, we would ask, “why do either?”

While I don’t believe power is the end-all, be-all, it is a critical component and certainly one of the primary KPIs for most athletic endeavors, including change of direction and forcefully moving another object (like a ball or person). Power is also a significant contributor to speed at the sub-elite level (read: non-Olympic sprinters).

Here, I will provide a few specific recommendations about weight room profiling in general and suggest a few specific assessments that are not in everyday use.

Power Profiles

Generating power profiles for the major lifts you choose to implement is both descriptive of and prescriptive for athlete force production performance and potential across a spectrum of velocities. They quantify how strong, fast, and powerful an athlete is—the marriage between strength and speed. The profiles do so by illuminating the following:

• Maximum unweighted velocity (or velocity with just a bar, a proxy for unweighted velocity).
• One rep max.
• Maximum power.
• Load that yields maximal power, dubbed “optimal load” in the literature.

Most VBT devices automatically generate load-velocity and load-power profiles after completing a few reps with various weights. If you need to do it manually, you can compute the time it takes to complete the concentric portion of a lift via video analysis and run the calculations yourself. This video provides an excellent and thorough overview of how to create your own load-velocity profiles in Excel.

Once you obtain the data, you may compare athletes against each other. For example, a receiver may boast a very high 1RM in the back squat but a relatively low peak velocity in the squat jump with just the barbell, and that provides context for training. In this case, the athlete would benefit from skewing more volume toward the velocity side of the spectrum and away from the maximum strength side with exercises like CMJs and lightly loaded jumps.

To assess general athletic/power abilities, these lifts are worthy of inclusion:

• Squat
• Deadlift
• Squat jump
• Bench press
• Landmine press
• Clean variation of choice

Certain teams and strength coaches prefer particular lifts over others. The above list isn’t rigid, but assessing the main lifts you choose to implement in your S&C program is ideal.

From there, you are armed with data to improve athlete power. Although there isn’t one “best practice” for improving power production, in general, training slightly above and below the optimal load (the weight that produces maximum power) is a solid strategy.

Calf Strength 

Beyond profiling the general lifts for raw physical outputs and preparedness, I recommend assessing a few specific actions: plantarflexion and hip extension force production.

These movements are rate limiters for speed, meaning even if the other pieces of the speed puzzle are in place, missing either of these qualities significantly limits speed potential.

Calf strength is particularly important during initial acceleration. The foot needs to be stable during the first steps of a sprint so the rest of the leg can push against it and propel the body forward. If the heel drops significantly upon ground contact during the first few steps, there is a significant energy leak that limits the rate of acceleration.

In athlete speak, stronger calves = more explosive starts.

Anecdotally, this is probably one of the reasons heavy sleds improve initial acceleration. Without discounting their effect on the rest of the system, we must recognize the training effect the calf and foot receive.

Maximum speed is also influenced by calf strength and power. Plantarflexion is the last piece of the kinetic chain—the crack of the whip—as the calf must overcome the force produced by the rest of the leg musculature pushing down into the ground to raise the heel and create plantarflexion.

During the final portions of ground contact, when the heel raises naturally due to reaching the end range of dorsiflexion, the calf must again act as an anchor, as it does during initial acceleration, to hold the heel in place and allow the hip extensors to push against it. Significant strength and power are required, and identifying athletes who lack such strength is an instrumental finding.

Hip Torque

Beyond calf contributions, the hip extensors play a special role in speed, as hip extension is clearly the primary driver of force into the ground. Squat and deadlift numbers are great and are indeed descriptive (to a degree) of hip extension potential, but let us recognize that hip extension creates both vertical and horizontal force, and those tasks are related to but distinct from each other.

Squats, deadlifts, and the IMTP all assess vertical force production. This is valuable and worth auditing, as vertical force production is a significant KPI toward maximal speed

But advanced sprinters understand that negative foot speed is also a critical variable, and striking the ground with an emphasis on such foot speed produces elite levels of force. Negative foot speed refers to the foot traveling backward—toward the center of mass—instead of strictly downward in a vertical fashion during the terminal swing phase. Coaches sometimes cue this as “pawing the ground,” a cue I’m not fond of but one that is descriptive of the action.

A stronger cue is one I learned from a coach who prefers anonymity: he refers to this action as swinging an axe, where the foot is the head of the axe. When chopping wood, the arc of the axe head eventually swings back toward the center of mass, like a pendulum, and not strictly downward in a vertical or piston-like fashion. So, too, should the foot travel backward toward the center of mass during the terminal stages of the swing phase.

Hip extension drives this motion.

Squats and deadlifts both involve the pelvis moving over a stationary foot. They are closed-chain actions juxtaposed with the open-chain motion of sprinting, wherein the foot travels through space underneath a pelvis that is fixed in relation to the torso (i.e., not hinging or moving vertically, as in squats and deadlifts).

Thus, analyzing hip extension in this forward-to-backward motion is highly specific to sprint speed. Said otherwise: we must assess hip extension ability where the pelvis is fixed in space and the foot and shank are the body parts intended to move, as opposed to the opposite, as in the lifts mentioned above.

My favorite assessment comes from the work of James Wild, who adapted a test originated by Goodwin and Bull. Fix the hips against an immovable object (like a heavily loaded barbell), place the heels on a force plate, and press them down into the plate as hard as possible, as if trying to make a crater with the heels.

Video 1. Hip isometric assessment, originated by Goodwin and Bull and enhanced by James Wild, integrating video and force plate data via Noraxon. The assessment quantifies RFD and maximal force production alike. Data must be normalized against body weight to draw conclusions regarding sprint performance.

A critical point: for this test to produce valid and actionable data, you must convert the force values gathered from the plates to hip torque and then generate torque-to-body-weight ratios, as opposed to force-to-body-weight. Torque takes limb length into account and is truly what drives horizontal sprint performance, as hip torque drives hip angular velocity and, thus, ground reaction force.

Let me be clear: ground reaction torque does not exist; ground reaction force is what propels athletes forward. But hip torque is what generates the hip and foot velocities that produce the resultant ground reaction force.

Indeed, the length of the moment arm plays a pivotal role in force expression. My intentions here are not to deliver a physics lesson, but the longer the moment arm (driven by leg length, in this case), the greater the torque. Thus, a taller athlete requires more hip torque (read: force production, i.e., strength) to get the same ground reaction force as a shorter-limbed athlete.

In practice, this means taller athletes require stronger hips than shorter ones. Clearly, training implications are present here. Once normalized to body weight, fair comparisons about hip torque can be made.

Analyzing torque with the knee bent to about 90 degrees and again with a knee at 15 degrees paints a more complete picture. A 90-degree knee better represents acceleration demands when the knee is much more flexed upon ground contact than it is during upright mechanics. Indeed, squats, deadlifts, and the IMTP may serve as a proxy for this measurement, but this position and hamstring/glute coupling are still more specific to early acceleration than those lifts are.

Propulsion and Elasticity

Whereas the hip assessments above directly measure RFD and maximal force production, jump tests deliver further insights into ballistic horizontal and vertical force production capacity, as well as elastic abilities.

The following tests are recommended:

• Broad jump
• Vertical jump
• 10-5 RSI/Scandinavian rebound jump test
• Triple broad jump

The following tests are honorable mentions that deserve consideration if time is not a constraint:

• Single-leg broad jump
• Single-leg 10-5 RSI/Scandinavian jump test
• Triple hop for RSI assessment

Data interpretations are provided later in this article, so I won’t belabor this point for now. I will quickly mention that the single-leg tests are valuable for assessing asymmetry and point out that the triple broad jump is an underrated tool, as it values both raw propulsion capability (force production) and elasticity. An MLB strength coach once told me that, for his players, the triple broad had the highest correlation with time to first base—even greater than the 90-foot sprint test!

Video 2. The 10-5 RSI and the Scandinavian jump test both evaluate the elastic potential of the lower leg. A jump mat, force plate, or contact grid (as shown in the video) can all streamline data collection. Alternatively, video analysis to quantify flight and contact times works but is laborious and time-consuming.

Aerobic Fitness

I’ve previously discussed how and why aerobic conditioning is vital for team sports athletes. In summary, aerobic health is a significant factor in repeat sprint ability. If you want athletes who can play fast while tired—or who aren’t tired when opponents are—aerobic fitness is a priority.

The 30-15 intermittent fitness test is an assessment that takes 25 minutes at most to complete, can be deployed with entire teams at once, and is valid and reliable enough to collect actionable data (see this article for an overview). The test provides a value similar to maximal aerobic speed from which coaches can A) estimate VO2max, B) track athlete progress objectively, and C) program conditioning workouts.

All you need to complete the test is a loudspeaker, YouTube, 40 meters of space, and a few cones.

The beauty is that the entire team can complete the test together, a myriad of research has been done to establish normative values (although, in fairness, most research is done on soccer athletes of varying levels), and coaches will quickly discover which athletes need to spend more time conditioning.

Sport-Specific KPIs and Holistic Health

Subsets of athletes who face unique sporting demands, such as overhead athletes, warrant specific testing. Quantifying shoulder rotation ROM and scapular mechanics for softball and baseball players, as well as javelin throwers, for instance, is a necessity.

Each of these athletes also utilizes rotational power to fuel performance.

The better you know the sport, the more closely you can capture high-value KPIs that coaches appreciate, says @KD_KyleDavey. Share on X

The better you know the sport, the more closely you can capture high-value KPIs that coaches appreciate. Adding exit velocity and a 90-foot sprint time to the athlete audit provides metrics that coaches find valuable—increasing your value simultaneously.

Other items to consider:

• Bloodwork and nutrition
• Lifestyle and sleep habits
• HRV status
• Team/school satisfaction
• Mental health and resilience

The point here is to look beyond physical capacity and toward the person as a whole, recognizing that they are more than a revenue earner and a stat scorer—they’re a complete person.

Are you happy with your college or team dynamics? Are you sleeping and eating well? Are you healthy internally? Are you mentally resilient enough to respond positively to adverse situations?

Respecting both the athlete as a person and the best interests of the team is not mutually exclusive. Healthy individuals create healthy teammates, and healthy teammates make for a healthy team capable of winning games. We need not pretend that pursuing W’s is inherently wrong or unhealthy or that maximizing athlete well-being in an effort to win is unjust.

Ultimately, ensuring holistic athlete health is best for the person and the team.

Interpreting the Data

Data tells a story. Our job is to extract and understand the story to make confident decisions that advance athlete potential on the field, court, or track. To do so, we must seek common threads that point toward certain lacking features.

Training time is limited, and coaches must know how to spend those precious minutes best to assert the most desirable outcomes for athletes. The more evidence that suggests a common theme, the stronger the case for biasing training toward that quality.

Ryan Grubbs discusses this concept and how he assesses athletes in an interview on the Pacey Performance Podcast.

To make clean comparisons regarding sprint speed, the strength and power data needs to be normalized to body weight. Sprinting is, of course, moving one’s body—so the numbers need to reflect that. When you compare athletes amongst a team, do so using the metrics relative to body weight. Otherwise, you run into the issue of thinking a 175-pound freshman receiver with a 375-pound back squat (2.14x body weight) needs to be stronger because the 245-pound linebackers are all squatting 450+ pounds (1.8x body weight).

Once the data is normalized to body weight, you can separate athletes in several ways: using quartiles, quintiles, Z-scores, standard deviations, etc.

None of these methods is perfect. They always produce bottom-of-the-barrel athletes, as there is always a “weakest” athlete in any group, even if they are actually absurdly strong. The opposite is also true: when using quartiles, there will always be athletes at the top, even if they are, in reality, poor performers.

The better route is to utilize challenging standards by which athletes can be compared. Research helps elucidate what these standards should be and allows coaches to use cut-off zones to determine if athletes indeed are deficient or, rather, simply the least elite of the group in that particular test.

The assessments discussed here have been selected via a reverse-engineering thought process. I want to know:

1. What performance factors influence the chances of success in sports?
2. What physical qualities underpin those factors?
3. How can those qualities be accurately assessed?

Without answers to these three questions, I won’t be able to interpret the data collected. For instance, without understanding that maximum strength and power are significant contributors to initial acceleration (the first steps in a sprint), we wouldn’t know to be curious about the strength and power metrics collected from an athlete with a slow start. Even further, we may not know that an athlete with a poor start yet sound strength and power metrics (relative to body weight—a paramount modification that cannot be overlooked when analyzing these outputs relative to sprint speed) likely has poor kinematics.

Providing a comprehensive education is beyond the scope of this article, but a few examples have already been provided for how you may interpret the audit. Sometimes the answer is straightforward, as in when most values are relatively high, but one or two are significantly low, like an athlete who is strong and powerful in the weight room but has a poor triple broad jump and a 10-5 RSI test. This athlete will benefit from elasticity work more than more weight room training.

As athletes become more elite, the audits typically become more difficult to interpret. This is why the audit exists in the first place: to determine what a great athlete needs to become even better. Share on X

Likewise, athletes with poor sprint kinematics but good weight room numbers should receive technical training if they want to be faster.

Other times, the answer is more complex—and as the athletes become more and more elite, the audits typically become more difficult to interpret. However, that is the reason the audit exists in the first place: to determine what a great athlete needs to become even better. It’s not worth the time to audit a first-year high school student only to conclude that everything must get better.

Packaging and Reporting the Data

It is not lost on me that this is a lot of data to collect, analyze, make recommendations from, and report back to the relevant parties. Completing each of these is our job as performance analysts, but the final step, reporting the data, is unique in that there is a recipient we must ensure understands the results with ease and clarity.

In reality, most performance analysis consultant jobs will be hired by the S&C, sport science, or medical staff—not the sports coaches themselves. While the support staff and the sports coaches are literally on the same team and are pulling the boat in the same direction—putting the team in a better position to win games—your job is to make those who hired you look good to their direct reports, who is usually the head sports coach.

The report you generate must clearly display the raw data you’ve collected, a brief analysis of those results, and the training recommendations deduced from them. It should be detailed enough for the strength, sport science, and medical staff to appreciate and follow, and clear enough for athletes and sports coaches alike to understand the bottom line.

Reports should be no more than one page per athlete and include a one-page team and position group summary.

Lastly, the report should “bucket” athletes into training groups based on the findings and recommendations. Doing so makes life easy for the strength and sport science staff and allows them to program with clear goals in mind.

Checkpoints and Re-Auditing: Ensuring Progress and Long-Term Development

Athlete audits are not meant as a one-time assessment, never to be revisited. Scheduling periodic data collection is vital for ensuring athletes progress in the desired domains, but such testing does not have to be formal, time-consuming, or overbearing.

To be clear: completing a full audit will take a whole training session, maybe two, depending on the time and facilities available as well as the flow of the program. It’s not wrong to collect data over two or more sessions to compile the audit. However, once the complete picture is pulled together, regular testing should monitor the areas of specific emphasis (the qualities highlighted in red in the image above). It can be built into training sessions to collect data and monitor athletes in an ecologically valid environment without disrupting the training process.

Scheduling periodic data collection is vital for ensuring athletes progress in the desired domains, but such testing doesn’t have to be formal, time-consuming, or overbearing, says @KD_KyleDavey. Share on X

A timed fly run or acceleration, a measured broad or vertical jump, and strength and power outputs in the weight room are data most coaches are likely gathering anyway. Monitor these key metrics to ensure athletes are progressing, understanding which values are the actual KPIs and which are the contributors to those KPIs.

Even with regular monitoring, complete audits should be scheduled annually or semi-annually. Doing so provides a host of key benefits:

• Quantifies athlete growth in response to the interventions delivered.
• Communicates to the athlete that they are indeed being tested and monitored (an undervalued aspect of auditing).
• Creates a new vision of what the athlete needs to continue improving.
• Ensures athlete strengths are not declining.
• Updates baseline data in the event of an injury.
• Updates database of normative values to compare against.
• Reveals insights between specific qualities and how they affect the major KPIs, like sprint and jump performance.
• Allows for long-term monitoring of athlete growth and development.
• Puts coaches and athletes on the same page, so to speak, with strength and sport science staff.

Failing to redo the battery of assessments is shortsighted and a lost opportunity. Perhaps most evidently, it would be a colossal failure to only monitor areas of weakness and ignore what makes the athlete great in the first place. If those qualities slip and backslide, the athlete may wind up worse than they started.

Dangers of Focus: Goodhart’s Law

Jo Clubb penned a fantastic and enlightening piece, “Why Every Practitioner Needs to Know Goodhart’s Law.”

In our setting, Goodhart’s Law dictates that when athletes and coaches focus too much on improving test measures, the value of those test measures may diminish or become irrelevant.

In Jo’s words: “We are in danger of optimizing for a metric that may not influence our ultimate goal (performance or injury) or, worse still, could potentially harm the goal.”

Coaches should take care not to make the performance test what matters and always keep in mind that enhanced game play is the end goal, says @KD_KyleDavey. Share on X

I believe the list of test measures proposed in this article is a strong one, but I certainly don’t believe these are the only metrics that can or should be collected. Coaches should take care not to make the performance test what matters and always keep in mind that enhanced game play is the end goal.

Indeed, we see this in elite athletes who do not present elite physical attributes. Game knowledge or technical and tactical execution can often offset physical inadequacies.

An Afterword

I have previously outlined guidelines to complete an effective sprint analysis. Two of the points (which are relevant to team testing) deserve a word of expansion.

I recommended not using an iPhone to film and instead using an actual camera with a tripod. A camera serves dual purposes:

1. Higher image quality.
2. Professional appearance and execution.

While I state that iPhones are great for quick and dirty analyses—and I use my iPhone for immediate feedback during training sessions—the point of using a camera for formal analyses may have come across as a bit pompous, which was unintended.

Lastly, I recommended shooting at 120 fps in 4k versus 240 fps at 1080p quality (iPhone quality). This drew a bit of criticism, as folks accurately pointed out that 240 fps allows for a more granular calculation of contact and flight times as well as velocities via splits (4ms intervals vs. 8ms intervals). That is a fair point.

The solutions are simple: either film one sprint at 120 fps and 4k and the next at 240 fps or, as I do now, film all sprints at 240 fps with 2.7k image quality, an option my camera affords. The tradeoff between 4k and 2.7k for twice the frame rate is a good exchange.

Auditing Is the Future

The future of strength and conditioning will continue moving away from glorifying a single quality, like maximum strength, and will evolve more and more toward individualized interventions.

The future of S&C will continue moving away from glorifying a single quality, like maximum strength, and will evolve more and more toward individualized interventions, says @KD_KyleDavey. Share on X

The old style of programming is to give all athletes the same general strength and conditioning workouts, cross your fingers, and hope they get better. For developmental athletes and cases when full auditing isn’t available, general programming that addresses the major physical qualities will probably provide improvement most of the time.

But for the advanced athlete and coach seeking more than the minimum, customized programming tailored to specific needs yields greater results.

Athlete auditing reveals invaluable insights, provides a true north that guides interventions, and allows strength and conditioning coaches to confidently program at an elite level to elicit elite results.

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF

References

Goodwin JE and Bull AM. “Novel Assessment of Isometric Hip Extensor Function: Reliability, Joint Angle Sensitivity, and Concurrent Validity.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2022;36(10):2762–2770.

Wild JJ, Bezodis IN, North JS, and Bezodis NE. “Characterising initial sprint acceleration strategies using a whole-body kinematics approach.” Journal of Sports Sciences. 2022;40(2): 203–214.

A coaching role is a teaching responsibility and we must understand that educating our athletes cannot be a passive or secondary behavior. Whether you work with young athletes or an adult population, those individuals have sought out the services of a coach in order to receive direction and guidance. And while there is an obvious tangible component to this (i.e., improving physical traits), there is also an underlying essence to what athletes expect from coaches: clarity and confidence.

Largely influenced by replicating a militaristic approach, for several decades the coaching industry had been misguided into believing that we needed to be the resident disciplinarian or authority figure within the sport or training setting. Fortunately, we are seemingly entering a transition point where the majority of us have seen the obvious shortcomings of this approach. Rather than meeting athletes with superiority and intimidation tactics, we need to recognize the importance of humanizing our relationship with our athletes. This doesn’t mean that we are without structure and professionalism; but there is a resounding difference between treating athletes like humans and soldiers at boot camp.

There is a resounding difference between treating athletes like humans and soldiers at boot camp, says @danmode_vhp. Share on X

Most of this speaks for itself, but a lot of these steps are just taking more initiative with the intangibles we all know—making eye contact when athletes are speaking to you, listening attentively, being considerate of their input, and so forth. These are things that require no technical skill or credentialling but really solidify how to be a good human.

I’ve made countless adjustments to my coaching and perception of human performance over the years, but few things have been more influential than incorporating a designated movement literacy day and putting an emphasis on developing or repairing the athlete’s relationship with training.

In this article, I’d like to cover a thorough breakdown of what my movement literacy session involves, and how this corresponds to taking a more educational approach with your athletes. Additionally, we will cover the importance of addressing your athlete’s relationship with their body and their understanding of the training process.

Movement Literacy Framework & Objectives

The overarching goals for a movement literacy session are simple: improve the athlete’s movement awareness and understanding of their body while providing clear insight as to what they can expect throughout the training process. Where the first session is dedicated to intake and assessment, my second session with someone is dedicated to this movement literacy session (~50-60 minutes).

In addition to the primary goals above, there are a few other elements we want to include or emphasize in the movement literacy session. We want to view this session as setting a robust foundation for the athlete to build on, and with this we want to cover all of our “big rock” items up front.

My approach includes introducing primary movements and functional patterns, providing context for frequent cues and training components, identifying individual deficits, and introducing warm-up and at-home protocols. Where I have my list of priorities from the coaching side, there is also a priority from the athlete’s perspective as well, so I make an effort to provide an environment that is welcoming to questions, input, and in some cases even collaboration.

I was told once by a military dog handler that their mantra when first starting to work with the service dogs is “Clear is kind, and kind is clear.” It just so happens this phrase fits beautifully for humans as well. I have since adopted this mantra for the sake of movement literacy concepts—being clear with your athletes is a simple way of also demonstrating kindness, as it shows you’re able to be empathetic to others, particularly those in a new environment taking on a new learning endeavor.

I was told once by a military dog handler that their mantra when first starting to work with the service dogs is *Clear is kind, and kind is clear.* It just so happens this phrase fits beautifully for humans as well, says @danmode_vhp. Share on X

Step 1: Movement Mechanics & Awareness

The first step in our movement literacy session is dedicated to introducing movement awareness and basic functional anatomical concepts. We have been quick to assume that athletes don’t care about technical aspects of training and this has been a point of contention amongst coaches for decades.

Not only do I vehemently disagree with that stance, but I have also found that by introducing these concepts early on, it prompts a sense of responsibility from the athlete to be more engaged in the training process. Sure, of course we’re going to have situations where athletes couldn’t possibly have any less interest in the details of movement and training, but what about those who do? We cannot automatically assume that our athletes are disinterested in learning because that assumption can be a damming disservice to the ones who do.

I will typically use a combination of whiteboard illustrations, visual demonstrations, and even video recordings of how they move as discussion points. This is conducted in a simple joint-by-joint approach, where I want to give them the surface level anatomy understanding and demonstrate how it is reflected in training. My standard five points here include:

1. Mechanics of the foot
2. How the hips move
3. Trunk & spine
4. Mechanics of the shoulder
5. Basic kinetic relationships

Remember we aren’t trying to bludgeon them with graduate level anatomy. We are giving them a simple introduction within the context of how it relates to our training process. I’ve found this to be especially valuable for athletes coming off injury. We should also approach this time with the intention of utilizing an of array teaching styles (i.e., visual, auditory, kinesthetic) so that we can observe how the athlete responds best to instruction.

Remember we aren’t trying to bludgeon them with graduate level anatomy. We are giving them a simple introduction within the context of how it relates to our training process, says @danmode_vhp. Share on X

Step 2: Functional 5 + Primary Movements

Once we have introduced the joint-by-joint and movement awareness concepts, we then want to shift to more involved elements. This begins with what I’ve termed to be my “Functional 5,” which is a simple battery that gives me multiple input points on how the parts work together. Nothing about these five movements is critical and you can populate this segment with whatever you find valuable.

Ultimately what we’re looking for here is a series of movements that give the athlete a sense of familiarity with the basics while providing coaches with an opportunity to evaluate a variety of patterns/movements. My general list for the functional 5 includes:

1. Neck and shoulder movement
2. Push-up
3. 4-way crawl
4. OH march + switch
5. Split squat + lunge

In addition to the functional patterns, I will also look to cover primary movements that will be performed frequently in training (i.e., squat variations, pulling, landmine variations). This is not meant to be a full install day, so really we are just touching on the primary elements involved and things for the athlete to be aware of. This provides a good opportunity to incorporate frequent cueing and context to different common positions we will work from. This not only helps to make sense of the anatomy points but also simplifies the instructions that will follow throughout training.

Step 3: Address Athlete Priorities

Where the first half of the movement literacy session is allocated for me covering my points from the coaching side, the back half is reserved for the athlete. Our primary consideration here is addressing the athlete’s individual priorities or specific deficits. Carving out time for this has been tremendously effective for me. There is a different outcome or takeaway than I normally have during a formal assessment, given that it is much more interactive by design.

Our primary consideration here is addressing the athlete’s individual priorities or specific deficits, says @danmode_vhp. Share on X

Moreover, once we hit the training floor, especially in a group setting, it’s difficult for coaches to get too in-depth on individual ailments. By emphasizing this during our movement literacy session, we can alleviate this issue and clear up any ambiguity right out of the gate.

When addressing athletes about their movement limitations or injuries, it’s imperative you do so in a way that isn’t indicting or demeaning. The ultimate goal of working with injuries or impairments is treating the athlete just like any other athlete. From the way you interact and communicate to the type of exercise and training parameters, we want to keep our injured crowd as close to the norm as possible. The psychological cascade of injury is complex and can often run deep, but the last things injured or limited athletes want are reminders of it.

Beyond that, we want to assert confidence in our ability to help while providing clarity and expectations for the plan moving forward. I think it’s refreshing for the athlete to feel like they are being treated like a human. This was especially the case for me working in the tactical realm, where the inherent expectation was for training to be a carbon copy of boot camp.

Irrespective of their background, there should always be an understood presence of parity between coach and athlete. This is especially the case with injured athletes; considering how much of the medical world can be cold and dismissive, I think we are in an opportune position to provide a sense of empathy and genuine care. Remember: clear is kind, and kind is clear.

Irrespective of their background, there should always be an understood presence of parity between coach and athlete, says @danmode_vhp. Share on X

Step 4: Whiteboard Review

This is effectively just a recap and summary period where we want to reiterate primary points of emphasis and goals moving forward. Somewhat of an extension from the point above, I will always be sure to allocate time for Q&A, although the goal is to have thorough dialogue throughout so there isn’t a demand for the awkward “ask me everything right now” prompting.

Nevertheless, we want to drive home two or three major points. Nobody will recall the whole session, but if we can just get even two things of value across, our time was worth it. Close the session out by reinforcing that they are an active part of this process. Not only is their input valuable, but it’s encouraged.

Training Relationships

I’ll leave you with a few points on training relationships, as they are intimately connected to the movement literacy session. Recognizing the poor relationship athletes have with training has been one of the most alarming things I’ve learned over the years. By poor relationship, I don’t mean not understanding how to put a routine together or picking bad exercises. What I mean by poor relationship is quite literally a lack of understanding the empirical purpose of training: moving better, performing better, and feeling better.

There are a ton of athletes and individuals out there who see training as an obligatory chore (at best) and as punishment (at worst). My goal in these cases is to shift their perspective of training from obligation to opportunity. We still want them to involve themselves in the training process, if not immerse themselves. At the end of the day, a lack of care or fulfillment for what we do will inevitably compromise results, even if the endeavor of training is well intended (i.e., wanting to get better for sport, improve general health). We don’t need everyone to love training, but we should do our part to at least encourage most to enjoy it.

Don’t lose sight of the underlying responsibility of being a teacher when you’re in a coaching position, says @danmode_vhp. Share on X

And overall, make it a priority to help guide them to a better understanding and ultimately better habits and practices as they apply to training. There is of course a time and place to push the needle, but in most cases, these sessions should not represent the majority of training. Don’t allow your athletes to correlate the effectiveness of their workouts based on their sweat rate or level of exhaustion. When the training is less demanding, explain to them what the goal of the session is, because what may be seen as pointless or a waste of time to them can be a transcendent learning point. Don’t lose sight of the underlying responsibility of being a teacher when you’re in a coaching position.

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF

The block start has been used in international competitions since 1937 and was first seen at the Olympics in 1948. Starting from a fixed block was shown to be advantageous over a standing start or non-starting block crouched position in the initial sector of sprinting. This is due to its favorable position to develop horizontal over vertical forces in the initial few strides to enhance acceleration.

However, starting block positions vary according to anthropometric measures, limb strength, flexibility, asymmetry, and athletic experience. Biomechanist Dr. Ralph Mann goes into extraordinary detail in this area, and I heartily endorse his book The Biomechanics of Sprinting and Hurdling for those wanting more detail.

Some coaches will also have athletes whose techniques are raw and unrefined and whose positions have remained unchanged since they first put spike to block.

The Project

I am fortunate to work alongside one of Australia’s best technical coaches, Scott Rowsell of RAD Squad. Together, we undertook a project to improve the first 10 meters of a 10.6-second sprinter using Plantiga to guide our decision-making. You can read more information on Plantiga in a previous article here.

We undertook a project to improve the first 10 meters of a 10.6-second sprinter using Plantiga to guide our decision-making. Share on X

The athlete has adopted a “right foot back plate” position (see image 1 above) over the last five years; however, individualized strength and force plate testing demonstrate more power and concentric force-producing capability in the first 100 milliseconds on the right side (see figure 1 below).

Therefore, the rationale was to switch him to a “left foot back plate” position to place the more powerful right limb in the front block and then take advantage of the longer contact time and force-generating ability out of the blocks (see image 2 below).

The Data

Left Foot Back Plate Position

Figure 2 shows the raw data collection of just the first five steps of this athlete’s block start with his “left foot back plate.” Plantiga enables you to zoom in or zoom out on this sort of data, allowing for deep, individualized analysis or a basic summary report with essential metrics such as load, peak acceleration, peak velocity, and asymmetry, to name just a few.

To simplify the explanation, the following points relate to the data pictured above:

1. Rear (left) foot push-off.
2. Front (right) foot push-off.
3. Step 1. Left foot strike (landing acceleration).
4. Left foot push-off.
5. Step 2. Right foot strike (landing acceleration).
6. Right foot push-off.
7. Step 3. Ground contact time.
8. Right foot “air time.”
9. Step 4. Ground contact time.
10. Time from rear foot leaving the block to first step.

The time to step 1 (point 10) for the left foot back plate position can be measured using the software. This is one of the most important considerations in perfecting the block start. An early first step would indicate a smaller first step, allowing for optimal acceleration rates as the center of gravity remains ahead of the leading foot. In this case, the time recorded was 0.314 seconds.

Plantiga enables you to zoom in or zoom out on this sort of data, allowing for deep, individualized analysis or a basic summary report with essential metrics. Share on X

In addition to the data generated automatically by Plantiga (e.g., peak acceleration, load, and ground contact time asymmetry), other data of relevance would be the push-off and landing accelerations across each step. The landing acceleration is similar to ground reaction force (GRF) in this case but measured in units of gravity (g), not Newtons (N).

Figure 3 displays this for the first three steps.

Right Foot Back Plate Position

As a comparison, the figures in red below are shown for the left foot rear plate setup.

Summary of Key Data

The data that can be retrieved from the Plantiga software to assist in the technical analysis of an elite sprinters block start is quite outstanding. It can be summarized into the following data sets: Time and Technical, Power and Acceleration, Load, and Asymmetry.

Time/Technical

Time to three steps showed a 25.1% difference (0.629 seconds to 0.787 seconds) between the right foot back (RFB) and the left foot back (LFB), which is the newer unpracticed position. Time to first step was 45.3% quicker (0.216 seconds to 0.314 seconds) with RFB, though GCT on first step was comparable across sides.

This is suggestive of poorer starting mechanics in the LFB but similar ankle stiffness across both sides.

Power/Acceleration

Peak acceleration of 4.99 m/s/s with RFB was 27.6% better than LFB. This was supported by a total departure push (rear and front foot push) from the blocks being 18.8% higher and the total push from blocks to step 3 being 10.0% higher for the RFB position.

Load

Total landing acceleration (similar to GRF) was 8.1% higher for LFB, where the total push force described earlier over the first three steps was 10% less. We could hypothesize that the mechanics induced by the less-familiar LFB position generated positions that resulted in higher landing accelerations and the observed asymmetry.

The presence of these two variables is undesirable without observed improvements in “departure force” or time to three steps, potentially creating an injury risk if exposed over time.

Asymmetry

Load asymmetry was 18.43% to the right for LFB compared to 8.94% to the right for RFB and ground contact time 12.12% to 3.95%, respectively, to the right. As we saw with force plate testing (figure 1), the right leg was able to generate higher force than the left, so the asymmetry to the right was expected.

Results and Final Takeaways

The data reflects that sprinting from a block start is a skill and requires a learned technique. This athlete had five years of an RFB position and only a small number of trials in the LFB prior to this testing session to ensure safety, which explains the inferior results observed as described above.

If this had been trained over many months, we could satisfactorily state that it is not worth pursuing this position change. But at this point, with the limited number of sessions, it is still unknown.

Will the time and energy spent refining the new block start position yield an overall benefit to the 100-meter sprint? Plantiga provides objective, professional-grade data that can help you decide. Share on X

The question that the athlete and the coach must answer is, will the time and energy spent refining the new position yield an overall benefit to the 100-meter sprint?

The rationale for its pursuit is sound, utilizing the more powerful right leg at the front for the longer block contact phase. However, could a similar result be achieved via an increased strength focus on the left leg at the front block angle?

These questions epitomize the art of coaching—but coaching without data is subjective. Plantiga can provide a plethora of objective, professional-grade data specific to assisting this decision-making process. It is simple, quick, unobtrusive, and within the financial reach of even the amateur athlete.

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF

The evolution of sports has led to a dynamic intensification of game speed, which has resulted in a rise in collision velocity. Game play, as well as the amount of force athletes can produce, is constantly increasing. As records are being broken across sports today, in-game player tracking is becoming more openly presented to the fan base. This increase in velocity can also be seen through the rise in force production that we witness daily on the field and in the weight room.

This change in sport, coupled with the turbulent times, makes return-to-play timelines, fatigue monitoring, game load monitoring, and overall analysis of physiological qualities more vital than ever. For this reason, it is essential that the high performance, sports science, strength and conditioning, and medical departments all work in a harmonious state.

As coaches, we always strive to provide justification or empirical evidence behind the methodologies we implement with our athletes. As part of the natural maturation process of being in the performance field, we continuously search for tools to help our athletes progress. Tensiomyography (TMG) is an incredibly powerful tool that provides real-time insights into muscle contractile properties (MCP), delivering quantitative data that fluidly transfers from the rehabilitation paradigm to the performance and game-play paradigm.

In fact, by implementing regular TMG testing, specialized rehabilitation methods may also be applied in microdoses as a complementary means to address the contractile properties of the damaged or injured muscles during standard rehabilitation processes. Even more so, these methods or applications can be seamlessly inserted into the performance model the athlete will enter once they have been cleared. Doing this makes the transition from rehabilitation to return to play that much more seamless, efficient, and individualized for the athlete.

TMG gives us the ability to not only hit the target but pick the exact point on the target that we need to identify finite fluctuations in muscle quality, says @DeRickOConnell. Share on X

With TMG, we are not simply throwing blunt-tip carnival darts at a balloon board, hoping to win the prize of identifying an issue. We are equipped with a Raven crossbow, precisely dialed in tight at 110 yards with ideal wind conditions and the perfect dew point, arming us with the ability to precisely home in on the underlying mechanisms causing the issue from a muscular perspective. TMG gives us the ability to not only hit the target but pick the exact point on the target that we need to identify finite fluctuations in muscle quality.

What Exactly Is Tensiomyography?

Tensiomyography is a powerful diagnostics tool that assesses muscle contractile properties by monitoring radial muscle belly displacement during electrical stimulus while under isometric conditions (as seen in the image below). This means that the system helps take the brain and nervous system out of the equation by manually firing the muscle and assessing the true qualities of the tissues without external stresses, demands, or influence from surrounding connective tissues. The contraction is initiated by the impulse stemming from the stimulator. From here, there is an instantaneously registered measurement and data collection on five specific MCP parameters, providing highly accurate, efficient, and quantitative results.

The Evolution of TMG in High Performance

Dating back to the 17th century, a small number of scientists could hear the sound of muscle contraction at very low frequencies. In 1810, William Wollaston was the first to link muscle sound with muscle force and thereby declare that muscle sound is at about 14–36 Hz, which was later proved as true (Oster, 1984). This was the beginning of mechanomyography (MMG), the oldest method of identifying muscle contraction properties. Later, as intrigue grew and concepts evolved, more intricate forms of MMG were developed, including utilizing lasers, accelerometers, and microphones. From there, the field evolved, and tensiomyography was born.

Tensiomyography is a noninvasive muscular analysis method invented by Vojko Valenčič at a Slovenian university in the late 1980s. Originally, TMG was designed for use in the medical field for degenerative muscle research. However, due in part to its fast and reliable muscular contractile properties, Srdjan Djordjevič and others’ work with TMG pushed its use to the forefront of the high-performance industry. By the mid-1990s, the high-performance and medical departments in sports were using TMG.

Before TMG was invented, there was no way to measure and collect finite individualized quantitative data on the specific muscle’s mechanical response, says @DeRickOConnell. Share on X

Before TMG was invented, there was no way to measure and collect finite individualized quantitative data on a specific muscle’s mechanical response. The data that TMG provides presents an in-depth understanding of the individual athlete’s specific muscle contractile properties (MCP) and a population reference. TMG enables us to analyze the intrinsic underlying elements of MCP, such as relaxation time, contraction time, and synchronization patterns. These MCPs can help us identify muscle fiber type, firing characteristics, and tonus qualities. The article “Tensiomyography Derived Parameters Reflect Skeletal Muscle Architectural Adaptations Following 6-Weeks of Lower Body Resistance Training” gives us an introspective look at using TMG for muscle fiber typing:

“Tensiomyography assesses contractile properties of an isolated muscle by measuring a number of parameters in response to a twitch contraction (Valenčič and Knez, 1997). Such parameters, including contraction time (Tc) and radial muscle belly displacement (Dm), can be obtained quickly and with minimal input from the participant being assessed. Tc has been previously correlated with proportions of slow twitch fibers within lower limb muscles, providing construct validation for TMG (Valencic et al., 2001; Dahmane et al., 2006; Šimunic et al., 2011); whilst a shorter Tc being considered reflective of a greater rate of force production (Rusu et al., 2013). Within the literature, Dm is considered to reflect muscle belly stiffness (Whitehead et al., 2001) and has been shown to alter with changes in muscle fatigue and aging (Rusu et al., 2013; Macgregor et al., 2016). TMG can distinguish between muscles of different training status, with shorter Tc and smaller Dm being seen in athletes with greater exposure to strength and power training (Loturco et al., 2015; De Paula Simola et al., 2016; Šimunič et al., 2018); due to increased proportions of fast twitch muscle fibers, and greater amounts of contractile material, respectively. Additionally, atrophy induced changes in muscle architecture are associated with increased Dm (Pišot et al., 2008; Šimunič et al., 2019).”

Next Step? Digging Into the Insights That TMG Provides

Utilizing TMG can lead to a large list of benefits for both the medical and performance departments. The tissue profile provided through TMG testing, widely used across European soccer leagues, enables the medical and performance departments to capture data that standard muscle testing and movement screening simply cannot encapsulate. This, in turn, provides training avenues otherwise typically unavailable.

TMG can be utilized to collect instantaneous quantitative data on the muscle’s contractile properties, and the reports created from this data can be used right there at the moment to change rehabilitation approaches and monitor real-time progress within the muscle. The ability to access this data so quickly and efficiently can aid in accelerating the rehabilitation process. This may also be an avenue to explore when determining what rehabilitation methods can be applied to the specific athlete after they have completed the rehabilitation continuum with the medical staff.

Specialized rehabilitation methods can be applied in microdoses as a complementary means to address contractile properties of the damaged or injured muscles while the athlete simultaneously completes their required performance training. Data consists of five distinct muscle contractile properties that are inherently connected in the proper functioning of the muscle. These parameters are:

1. Delay time
2. Contraction time
3. Sustained time
4. Relaxation time
5. Displacement

1. Delay Time (Td)

Delay time is a measure of the initiation time it takes for the muscle to be fired once stimulated. TMG presents this data of the time between the electrical impulse and 10% of the contraction. From a very basic perspective, this measures how long the muscle takes to contract from total relaxation to contraction once an impulse is sent.

2. Contraction Time (Tc)

Contraction time is a measure of the duration of time that it takes for the muscle to contract fully. To decrease variance, TMG collects data in a window of 10% and 90% of the stimulated contraction.

3. Sustain Time (Ts)

Sustain time is a measure of the duration of the muscle’s contraction from the mid-point to the end of the relaxation cycle. This is represented within the data as the time between 50% contraction and 50% relaxation. Simply put, this measures how long the contraction is sustained or held.

4. Relaxation Time (Tr)

Relaxation time is a measure of how long it takes the muscle to relax. An athlete’s ability to relax is imperative in performance. This measure is represented in the data as the time between 90% and 50% of the relaxation, as discussed in Supertraining, and part of the rationale behind the importance of training with ASFM (especially oscillatory methods). The greatest differentiator in elite-level performance does not lie in the athlete’s ability to contract an agonist muscle but in their ability to relax their antagonist muscle. This ability leads to more efficient and purely powerful movements.

5. Displacement (Dm)

Displacement is the measurement of the distance that the muscle covers when it contracts—the “flex” of the muscle (otherwise known as the maximal displacement of the muscle belly). This measure closely relates to the tonus or stiffness of the muscle.

Below you will find a key from the TMG website on how to interpret the information in the graph based on the five elements of MCP that were analyzed during the assessment.

Once a test is completed, the software creates a graph of the contraction separated left versus right. Below is a sample reading I took of an athlete, examining their erector spinae via the TMG software. The graph also includes specific population-based averages such as sport and position within the sport to compare live assessments to (shown to the right, marked “Ref”).

The graph above represents a particular measurement within a much larger report (via the TMG software). Several auto-created reports in that dashboard can be selected, including individual reports and team report analyses. The information presented in these reports includes:

• Data highlighting lateral and functional symmetries.

I have included images of this data below to help give a better idea of how the information is initially presented. These are the comparative test results during a two-week phase of rehabilitation. The first image is where the athlete entered the rehabilitation process; the second image represents the results after spending two weeks on an altered plan based on some of the data provided by TMG. While it is clear that this athlete still has a long road ahead in the rehabilitation process, we can see significant progress in finite areas that I could not quantitatively represent before I assessed the athlete. We can see that exceptional progress has been made, especially within the functional symmetry of the Achilles tendon.

• Line graph representation of MCP (seen above).
• Radar chart indexing comparative standardized value ranges (seen below).

• Bar graphs on displacement and contraction windows—sports reference, acceptable value, muscle stiffness, etc. (seen below).

• A color-based chart overlaying a graphic of the human body highlighting worrisome contractile readings and possible inventions to address these issues (seen below).

• A simplistic paragraph interpreting readings and possible interventions (ex: strengthening, stretching, activation, and relaxation techniques) on the left versus right side, highlighting functional and lateral symmetry in comparison to the player population. Below you will find a tiny snippet of what this part of the generated reports looks like. 

Taking the Next Step with the Data

While the TMG software provides a great starting point for remedying the MCP deficiencies each athlete possesses, if we begin to dig deeper and think about connecting the data to the demands of the sport, we can identify ways to address specific qualities with manipulating exercise techniques.

If we dig deeper and think about connecting the TMG data to the sport’s demands, we can identify ways to address specific qualities with manipulating exercise techniques, says @DeRickOConnell. Share on X

This approach allows us to apply specific techniques to each athlete to address individual inefficiencies or rehabilitative needs as they concurrently complete their scheduled training phase with the team. TMG enables us to provide the athlete and high-performance team with real-time data during the rehabilitation process. We can perform testing weekly or bi-weekly on all surrounding muscular groups to identify any increases in the contractual qualities of the injured muscle, as well as all musculature surrounding the joint or up the chain.

This is especially useful for athletes who have been in a cast or sling and may have lost a considerable amount of musculature or the ability to actively contract and recruit the muscles that are involved around the injured joint. A situation such as this typically leads to poor movement patterns and downregulation, as synchronization abilities are inhibited due to the injury.

One of the most interesting cases I have encountered was an athlete with repetitive ankle injuries. The biggest issue, however, was that it was challenging to assess progress within the rehabilitative process due to the nature of the injury. The athlete could not perform any loaded movements, and passive range of motion assessments did not paint a large enough picture. Furthermore, since structural strength was nearly diminished and inflammation was high due to the recovery process, strength testing was not going to be feasible either. TMG enabled us to identify and track progress around the ankle, deep in the foot, and up the lower body’s kinetic chain.

By approaching the injury in this manner, we were able to identify factors that we typically are unable to assess and then provide quantitative data on the affected area of injury.

From this information, high-performance departments can analyze synchronization symmetry within the athlete and even begin to standardize their own sport- or position-specific protocols. For example, a quick and simple “Hockey Assessment” that I created provides quantitative data of MCP and synchronization patterns within a hockey population, which includes running TMG testing of:

• Biceps Femoris
• VMO
• Erector Spinae
• Adductor Longus
• Rectus Femoris
• Vastus Lateralis
• Semitendinosus

I perform this test as an entry-level diagnostic for all hockey players entering off-season training. Dovetailing off this assessment, TMG provides two incredibly insightful measures of synchronization patterns:

1. Lateral symmetry
2. Functional symmetry

These measures are an outcome of a formulated analysis looking at all five MCP properties measured via TMG. Lateral symmetry provides insight into the MCP elements of a muscle via left versus right (for example, looking solely at the data of the left VMO to the right VMO). These measures are provided for the individual but also compared to the population of the sport. We can use this data to create systemic red flags when an athlete presents outside of a certain window of symmetry.

It would be a good idea to create your own sport-specific data pool based on the population you are testing or use the sport reference data provided via TMG. This helps you to be aware of sport-specific synchronization adaptations that occur due to the movement demands of the sport. For the most part, a window of 10%–15% deviated asymmetry is commonly used as a “red flag”—if this type of marker is presented, it may be time to discuss the results with the medical department and build out a plan to address the issue.

Functional symmetry is also provided through the data that TMG records during the test. This is an incredibly valuable tool, and TMG provides an endless list of possibilities that allows us to identify asymmetries across joints throughout the entire body. This measure is even more important in determining possible injury potential. A typical window used in identifying injury risk is a functional asymmetry rate of 30%–35%. If an athlete presents outside of this, they will likely be exposed to higher injury risks during game play. You can use the provided functional symmetry readings to catalog and monitor athletes or create your own data monitoring system and import the data of tests you make, such as the above hockey test. As an example, functional symmetry TMG provides an equation for functional knee symmetry that is (VL&VM&RF/BF).

TMG provides an endless list of possibilities that allows us to identify asymmetries across joints throughout the entire body, says @DeRickOConnell. Share on X

The information provided here, along with the other tests the athlete performed, helped to illuminate any glaring needs in training as well as offer great general insight into the MCP of each athlete. This data can also be used to compare the specific individual’s contractile properties to an entire population of elite, college, and professional hockey players and forward versus defenseman, as well as female versus male.

What is great about TMG is that not only can you build out your own population pool and data representation, but TMG as a company has been collecting thousands of data points for years, providing a large population pool that allows you to compare athletes in just about every sport to previously collected assessments. This data collection is also continuously updated, ensuring a constant input of new comparative data within the system.

From Rehabilitation to Performance

As we touched on earlier, the information collected gives us insight into MCP synchronization patterns, fiber typing, and fiber dominance. However, we can go even further and assess real-time fatigue and potentiation rates.

I have been fortunate enough to thoroughly explore and investigate the MCPs of athletes in a multitude of ways with TMG. The data represented could be used to identify peak potentiation times, helping to focus on specific exercise duration and the effects of different periods of eccentric, supramaximal eccentric, overcoming isometrics, loaded oscillations, and power range concentric exercises ranging in duration from 2 to 10 seconds. It could also help break down the differences in muscle response when an athlete performs these exercises in a single effort bout or a repetitive effort bout such as cluster sets.

We can take this a step further and not only assess potentiation rates by duration and exercise but also identify contractile response differentiation in specific muscles versus the movement. This, in turn, helps to illuminate the exact response a muscle gives based on specific exercises or movements. From here, we can use this information to begin to build out peak potentiation profiles. These profiles can be based on collected information such as sport (also investigating movement pattern dominances and synchronization adaptations of the sport), gender, the potentiating exercise, the duration of exercise, and the muscle groups involved to help create performance training cycles that flow together.

MCP fatigue can be monitored throughout the season, not just from a training perspective but also as a means of diagnosing potentiation and exertion fatigue rates. We can insert the data provided into our athlete monitoring systems as part of the workload management equation. Decreases in positive MCP may signify a need for alterations to training plans and practice loads and even signal oncoming illness. This data gives us an opportunity to diagnose not only instantaneous and acute fatigue but also chronic fatigue, identifying and adjusting days ahead of a potential injury, poor performance, or possible overtraining syndrome.

For additional information on implementing TMG readings as a means of monitoring potentiation fatigue rates, I highly suggest watching the presentation by Srdjan Djordjevic. His course on the “Development of Speed” is a great resource on the various ways to apply TMG to quantify the influences of potentiation and identify fatigue rates.

As an additional note, below is an excerpt from an article by Carl Valle that perfectly encapsulates what TMG can mean to a high-performance department:

“Coaches care about managing fatigue, and medical professionals tend to want to know about the risk for a new injury and the recovery for existing injuries. Screening has always been murky, but sometimes an athlete still struggles with a lingering problem that is a ticking time bomb. Athletes can pass movement screens and range of motion tests and still have a neuromuscular impairment.

Tensiomyography is the equivalent of a lie detector for muscles. Athletes often know when something is wrong and while medical professionals may listen to their complaints, TMG connects the subjective information to something tangible for the professional. Since the information is objective and quantified, it’s a permanent record of how the tissues trend over a season.”

Quantifying Systemic Effects of Various Interventions

Another avenue that can be explored is using TMG to identify changes in MCP before and after soft tissue therapy, neurolymphatic work, neurological wake-up drills, various breathing modalities, and acupuncture. By doing so, we can see what is truly happening to MCP before and after these processes. Of course, there is a larger window of variance over the population as a whole when looking at these types of interventions for several reasons. Still, it is nevertheless very interesting to see how an individual’s tissue responds.

The TMG website also provides an extensive list of scientific publications that I highly suggest reviewing. The database of research articles covers all topics from a medical perspective to a high-performance perspective. The link to this page can be found here: Tensiomyography; Full List of Publications.

TMG and the Hyperspeed Exercise Continuum

How can we use TMG readings to help identify what modality within the hyperspeed exercise continuum may be applied to the athlete to help make their training even more specific?

Before we get into how the methods fit in with different TMG variables, I wanted to give a brief overview of each hyperspeed modality. Through standard training methods, it is incredibly difficult—if not impossible—to train with or expose an athlete to the velocity demands that they will see on the field of play. It is crucial that we try to find ways to help athletes adapt to these demands in their training. This is not only vital from an athletic enhancement perspective but also paramount from an injury prevention perspective and the return to play transition.

We want to help the athlete’s kinetic chain be able to produce and withstand high-velocity force. Even more importantly, we want the athlete to be able to possess a high work capacity within these means. I know at first glance it may seem counterintuitive to say that work capacity and peak velocity movement coincide, as we typically train the qualities separately, but in the field of play, while velocities may diminish due to fatigue, an athlete faces the demand to perform at their peak velocity for the duration of the game or match.

Along with this come repetitive bouts of max-effort, high-velocity movements. Many athletes experience injuries when they are fatigued and as their game workload increases—this is especially apparent in athletes who are returning to play after an injury. If not adequately prepared from a training as well as a workload re-integration perspective, these athletes are at high risk for reinjury and, unfortunately, multiple reinjuries.

Hyperspeed exercises attempt to capture and train an athlete in an extremely high velocity-force perspective by applying various methods to address co-contraction, elasticity, and neural work capacity. These may be the three most important methods to apply in training athletes for high performance and return to play.

Co-contraction, elasticity, and neural work capacity may be the three most important methods to apply in training athletes for high performance and return to play, says @DeRickOConnell. Share on X

The concept of co-contraction refers to the body’s—specifically, the nervous system’s—ability to create perfect synchronization of opposing muscles around a joint to stabilize the structure. This correlates to sprinting in that as the foot strikes the ground, muscles need to quickly activate in unison to create rigidity and stiffness in the joint to meet the force and power demands of the movement. To make it easier to understand, visualize or even watch a video of a cheetah sprinting at full speed: as the animal goes from a dead stop into a full sprint, hitting speeds over 60 mph in under three seconds, its dorsal line, the line from behind the skull extending into the tail, maintains the same postural positioning and triggers signals to the brain to maintain an intensified visual focus.

Of course, sprinters and athletes clearly do not have the same physiological composition as a cheetah; however, we can train our nervous system to elicit this characteristic. As the cat accelerates, all four of its feet strike completely different ground surfaces and levels simultaneously. The cheetah uses a highly adaptive co-contraction trait to stabilize its joints and continue to accelerate through the unpredictability of surface terrain. This is co-contraction in its most prime example and the response that we want to elicit through training.

To function correctly, the demands must be met at an even quicker rate than the velocity being created in the limbs and body during sprinting. Sometimes, a lack of rigidity can downregulate the output of power if the brain feels there is an unequal ratio of stiffness to power. Too often, developing co-contractions is overlooked and not conceptualized or held to the proper level of importance. Programs often place too much emphasis on standard strength training practices, focusing on progressively loading an athlete in a rep range to become stronger. While strength and power are obviously very important aspects, it is crucial from a performance standpoint that the principle of co-contraction and time be considered and applied in training.

Athletes must be able to withstand high amounts of eccentric force. This means the athlete should not simply “absorb” force but withstand and propel it under the applied tension, creating an extremely rigid movement and increasing rate of force development. An athlete will only become as powerful as the eccentric force they can withstand. This takes precedence over other qualities when it comes to true elite-level performance.

When loading an athlete, there is very little co-contraction needed to push a barbell with both feet planted on the ground; however, this is not the nature of sport (except for powerlifting). When moving at high velocity, co-contractions occur in a hundredth of a second. As the nature of the sport demands high-velocity movement, the body needs to elicit these co-contractions at an even more efficient rate. Keep in mind that co-contractions dictate many aspects of movement, most notably the ability to create explosive movement and reduce injury during these demands. For the purpose of this article, we want to develop and prevent both.

Co-contractions are also part of the stumble reflex. When someone falls or trips, the body tightens up to prepare for that fall. This occurs so you do not get hurt or fall to the ground. This primitive reflex is why your body syncs up when you trip on something, and the next step is very stiff.

To elicit and train this, we want to trick the body into thinking we are going to trip. This approach will develop greater pre-tension when we hit the ground. The more pre-tension an athlete possesses before hitting the ground, the stiffer the joint will be, and the less energy is displaced and wasted when the athlete goes to push during their next step. You can find more in-depth information on the importance of co-contractions and how they apply to sprint training in “Triphasic Speed Training Manual for Elite Performance: Part 1 The Spring Ankle Model,” which I wrote along with Cal Dietz and Chris Korfist.

1. The Co-Contraction Method

Implement this method by placing bands above and below the working limb or limbs. There is typically slightly more band tension placed on the side of the targeted muscle/muscle groups. This method aims to create a significant adaptation in synaptic signaling rates, which will, in turn, create a higher transmission speed between neurons. As the athlete begins to adapt, they will start creating incredibly fast neuromuscular actions around the joint. This includes quicker rates of turning the muscle on and off, as well as increasing dynamic stabilization around the joint that adapts to meet the need of the velocity created by the limb.

The outcome of this method is a significant gain in neural adaptations throughout the body. Of the three primary methods, co-contraction is performed with the most ferocious intent at the highest velocity. This method is most commonly implemented in speed, peaking, and concentric phases. Athletes who exhibit an increased need to improve coordination and agility may also see large benefits from performing this method. Depending on the desired adaptation and the athlete’s training level, external loads such as small dumbbells and ankle weights may be applied to the exercise to increase demand.

Video 1. An upper body co-contraction method exercise: Prone Incline Rear Delt.

Video 2. A lower body co-contraction method exercise: Hip Abduction/Adduction Contralateral Narrow Stance.

From a TMG perspective, if a muscle exhibits low neural drive symbolized by slow contraction time, implementing co-contraction methods may lead to the greatest gains for that athlete. This method tends to be incredibly taxing on the central nervous system. Band tension is commonly overlooked; however, it is very important that adequate band tension is placed on the athlete. Without this, the exercise’s speed will greatly diminish, reducing contraction times and requiring increased and unnecessary stabilization time and energy.

2. The Rebound Method

I often describe this method to younger athletes as “the kangaroo exercise,” which helps them picture the movement’s demands. The exercise is performed with large, graceful bounds led by band contact filled with ferocity and aggressiveness. This method requires a violent movement against the bands, creating a massive demand in eccentric braking forces to decelerate the movement and leading to adaptation in the athlete’s tissue (very similar to the contraction requirements of a bound). We can think of this as a juiced-up shock method exercise, especially when performed with a pause.

With the rebound method, we can produce plyometric-like movements in all planes, with upper- and lower-body extremities. The rebound method is very commonly placed with the eccentric, strength, and power phases of training. Alterations to the methods can include placing dumbbells in the hand or ankle weights on the athlete. Remember, adding this external weight and changing band tension alters contractile properties. This modification in load and velocity moves performance qualities from an eccentric emphasis to a strength or power emphasis, depending on the velocity and contraction demands of the movement. Implementing rebound methods for the muscle group may lead to the most significant improvements for an athlete who exhibits deficiencies in maximal displacement.

Video 3. An upper body rebound method exercise with external weight: Bent Over Rear Delt Rebound.

Here are some examples of lower-body rebound method exercises:

Video 4. Standing Angled Hip Flexor Rebounds.

Video 5. Hamstring Razor Curl Double Band Rebound.

Video 6. Hamstring Razor Curl 3 Band Rebound.

Here is an example of a lower-body rebound method exercise with external weight:

Video 7. Ankle Weight Prone Psoas Rebounds.

3. Oscillatory Isometrics (OCIs)

OCIs are often used when metabolic and high-velocity work capacity demands are the target of adaptation. From a metabolic perspective, OCIs are by far the most demanding technique: the method is performed by placing the limb against a band and performing an oscillation into the band. The most important exercise element is ensuring the athlete maintains constant tension without leaving the band. The general movement can be small, but due to the application of constant tension and recruitment demands, this variation is very taxing on the metabolic system.

Typically, this method is worked into early phases and return to play scenarios, where work capacity and tissue adaptation are the primary focus. However, the adaptations involved in the movement also slide very well into power phases. OCI also syncs well with quasi-isometric training; for example, if an athlete exhibits significant deficiencies in sustaining times as measured by the TMG, OCIs may be a great tool to introduce to the athletes’ training regimen.

Video 8. A lower body OCI: Prone Psoas OCI.

Options for Application

Now that we have collected the data, we have a couple of different ways in which we could approach each athlete. Looking at one hypothetical example, let’s say we have an athlete who is cleared to move out of general preparation and into a heavy eccentric phase. This athlete, however, is also currently dealing with a lingering shoulder injury from the season. While the athlete is likely scheduled to perform the rebound method with light dumbbells and ankle weights throughout this phase, we can use the data to address the MCP demands that are present in the shoulder as well. Coming off a long-term shoulder injury in which the athlete has spent time in a sling greatly affects the amplitude and, even more likely, the displacement. From here, we have a couple of viable options for the athlete.

• If we deem that OCIs are the best route to take to target the athlete’s shoulder issues, then we could have the athlete perform their prescribed rebounds throughout the phase and simply replace rebounds with OCIs, being sure to sync up the duration of the exercise so that the global stress remains constant. TMG allows us to combine a typical global hyperspeed approach while implementing an individualized local stimulus approach when necessary.
• Another option is to address imbalances by implementing hyperspeed modalities that meet the specific demands microdosed throughout the week or by taking a grand-scale one-day macrodose approach. For example, this is where you could keep the aforementioned athlete on weighted rebounds throughout the week and then simply switch the entire approach at the end of the week, when volume typically takes precedence. The athlete would then perform only OCIs for the entire workout, focusing on every joint and not just the shoulder.

Using the data presented via TMG may also allow us to manipulate in-season phases. Constant monitoring enables us to combine the athlete’s needs with the modality that may help them the most. In doing so, we distribute exercise protocols that allow the athlete to improve at a personal level and also preserve vital in-season energy stores. We may split our teams up into groups that need to focus on a rebound day, a co-contraction day, or an OCI day. As discussed above, we may also have the opportunity to blend a primary modality with just one or two of the others that match the specific contraction demands of an athlete.

In another scenario, the athlete might perform a rebound day without added external load but added co-contraction for the hamstrings, as the athlete possesses slow contraction rates and plays a high-velocity sport. In this case, stimming or potentiating at a low volume may be beneficial for the given athlete.

Given the data we are presented with, there are endless possibilities for making minor adjustments that can create huge benefits for each athlete individually. Applying hyperspeed modalities to sync with the current goals of the phase is very common, but now we can sprinkle in very specific modes for various athletes who may be coming off injury and rehab protocols or athletes who simply need to remain in a very specific and individualized phase.

Bringing Together Tensiomyography and Hyperspeed Exercises

Below, I have created a starting point for correlating TMG readings and applying hyperspeed exercises. This is meant to be a jumping-off point, primarily identifying one or two elements of each measured parameter. I wanted to begin the conversation here, as it’s meant to inspire a much deeper look into the various correlations that exist when addressing these qualities in a precise manner. However, even by looking at a particular element of each measurement, we can begin to implement a plethora of changes to each of our athlete’s programs as we are likely to see at least one of these deficiencies pop up in each athlete’s test.

Let’s look at each of the elements analyzed through testing, as well as one or two hyperspeed exercise adaptations that can be made based on the data presented:

Delay Time (Td)

Delay time is heavily associated with an athlete’s nervous system firing rates. If an athlete exhibits a delay time that exceeds the normative values based on the population reference, they may possess a below-average neural synaptic transmission or “slow neural drive.” One possible way to combat this is to introduce the athlete to co-contraction exercises.

Another often-seen cause for excessively high delay times is fatigue. This could be caused by sport, overtraining, or low work capacity. If we rule out all external causes, and it is genuinely low work capacity or muscular endurance issues, ICOs can be inserted into the athlete’s program to address this issue.

Contraction Time (Tc)

If athletes exhibit a sluggish time to contraction, they may need to find ways to improve firing rates. This can be done by incorporating co-contraction exercises throughout their programming. By doing this, we are attempting to increase the muscle’s response to instantaneously high velocity switches between agonist and antagonist muscles.

Often closely associated with muscle composition, another avenue that can be explored when an athlete exhibits slow contraction times are activation exercises. We can explore two routes to identify which the athlete is more responsive to:

1. We can begin by having them perform a hierarchy of activation exercises for and around the muscle or muscles that exhibit the inhibition in contraction time.
2. We can address the downregulation or inefficient firing patterns through methods such as Reflexive Performance Reset to help the nervous system fire in a way that allows the muscles to contract at a higher, more efficient rate and pattern, as there may be deeper reasoning behind the contraction inhibition exhibited by the athlete.

Sustain Time (Ts)

If an athlete exhibits an above-average sustained time (“above-average” being a negative correlation) compared to the reference data, this could be due to several factors. Above-average sustained time can lead down a very extensive list of possible correlations. For now, we’ll focus on forcing an on/off switch within the body, specifically the nervous system. In this case, we will apply co-contraction methods as a means to encourage that “off switch” development.

During the co-contraction, the body, of course, is forced to turn on very rapidly, but by doing this, the opposing musculature must also turn off. As a very important side note, I would also look into the athlete’s overall workload and trends, as they may be entering a window of extreme fatigue.

Relaxation Time (Tr)

Relaxation time, along with sustained time, has been discussed in close relationship with the functionality of the sarcoplasmic reticulum. More specifically, I am referring to the efficiency of the calcium pump. This pumping action is the incipient stage of a muscle contraction. These two measures offer a bird’s-eye view of the reciprocating actions needed within the sarcoplasmic reticulum for proper muscular contraction. Time to relaxation can be associated with several MCP qualities that may need to be addressed.

If an athlete exhibits prolonged relaxation time, this is typically a sign that the tissues are having trouble releasing tension. An avenue that can be explored with athletes who exhibit above-average relaxation time is to address the tonus within the tissue. Myofascial release modalities, ART, or stretching modalities may lead to improvements in the quality of the tissue. Examining this issue from a training perspective, there are two first steps that you can take with the athlete. The first is applying co-contraction methods to improve the athlete’s ability to turn on antagonist muscles, thus leading to a forced adaptation to relaxation.

However, rebound methods can be applied if the athlete is presenting a discrepancy in relaxation time coupled with above-average displacement. Finally, a critical component to consider is the athlete’s psycho-emotional balance. This type of athlete may be overtrained and experience chronic fatigue factors. They may also be in a state of chronic sympathetic dominance. In these cases, manipulating the hyperspeed exercise isn’t necessarily what the athlete needs. They may need a decrease in workload, soft tissue work, breath work, grounding work, and light and heat therapy, and overall increases in time spent focusing on relaxation. In some cases, this athlete may also need to alter their diet and supplement regimen to attain healthy gut microbiota.

Displacement (Dm)

Deficiencies in maximal displacement may signify several different possibilities. If an athlete exhibits higher than the reference point of displacement, this may signify that the muscle in question may lack absolute strength. From a performance perspective, this translates into the athlete being able to withstand and reciprocate force. If possible, you may want to compare this data with drop jumps on the force plate, RSI, or other testing procedures involving force absorption and breaking ratios. If the correlations do match, then applying the rebound method may lead to the most considerable improvements for the athlete.

Maximal displacement can also disturb relaxation time due to muscles still being under tension. This delayed relaxation effect is the culmination of mechanoreceptors being overloaded due to too high of a displacement. If you deem that the athlete is simply weak, untrained, or coming off an injury and also lacks general strength and muscular endurance, applying more OCI exercises may be the best option for the given scenario. Lastly, as displacement also provides excellent insight into the tonus qualities associated with the muscle, below-average displacement may also require stretching or other tissue and myofascial interventions to improve the general MCP qualities.

Correlations in Performance Assessment

There are now other qualities that researchers have begun to analyze based on these five primary measurements. From a structural and medical perspective, we can take a deep dive into the MCP qualities that each athlete possesses. Using these preexisting qualities, we can create our own customized profiles using the bilateral and functional symmetry formulas to monitor fatigue, track rehabilitation progress and address each muscle in a powerfully tailored and specific manner.

New research and published formulas have started to shed light on more specific MCP correlations and algorithms. From a performance perspective, we can combine all the above information with formulas that look directly at contractile velocities. Contraction velocity is a metric calculated using a comparison formula between Maximal Displacement and Contraction Time. This gives us a very interesting insight into an athlete’s contractile velocities. This can be incredibly useful in high-velocity-based sports and training, first as a general diagnostic and also as a way to monitor finite deviations in fatigue rates.

Contraction time (Tc) provides us with insight into the speed at which a muscle twitches and coincidingly contracts in relation to maximal displacement. However, one such parameter that is now being explored as a more specific means to monitor athletic performance is known as a velocity of contraction (Vc). Velocity of contraction is a calculated formula that represents the sum of maximal radial displacement divided by delay time plus contraction time:

𝑉𝑐 = Dm / Td + Tc

The idea is that by bringing together all of these assessment points within the muscle, we can get a better picture of velocity demands. TMG-derived velocity of contraction can be an incredibly valuable tool. By using this formula, we can simultaneously integrate the mechanical outcomes provided by TMG. Velocity of contraction is capable of detecting functional changes in the muscle’s mechanical properties, at least when these neuromechanical adaptations are related to the impairments in maximal sprint ability and COD speed performance in professional soccer players (Loturco et al., 2016).

TMG-derived velocity of contraction can be an incredibly valuable tool. By using this formula, we can simultaneously integrate the mechanical outcomes provided by TMG, says @DeRickOConnell. Share on X

Normative values and a standardized formula for Vc are still being established. Vc can be used as part of the equation in fatigue monitoring; however, due to the elements involved in the formula, Vc is affected differently depending on the specific stress of the sport. For example, impaired Vc was delayed until 72 hours after completion of high-intensity endurance training, unlike high-intensity strength training, after which Vc was impaired immediately (Macgregor et al., 2018)

Research into Vc has also led to the attempt to standardize another formula to encapsulate overall athletic performance, including fatigue rates and even fiber typing. This metric is known as normalized response speed or radial twitch response (Vrn). Normalized response speed shows us the relationship between the difference of the deformation between 10% to 90% and the increase of the contraction time for those values (Rojas-Barrionuevo et al., 2017; Rodríguez-Ruiz et al., 2014). When a muscle becomes enhanced, it shows lower values in Dm, Ts, and Tr and a decrease in Tc. In contrast, a fatigued muscle (or due to a deficit of mass or muscle tone) presents higher values in Dm, Td, Ts, and Tr and an increase in Tc (Rojas-Barrionuevo et al., 2017). Additionally, Vrn is a relevant indicator of functional instability and influences jumping capacity (Rodríguez-Ruiz, et al., 2014).

By spending additional time interpreting the data from these measures, we can begin to tailor incredibly specific programming protocols for our athletes based on finite alterations and data. While there certainly is a large number of correlated possibilities when analyzing MCP with TMG, using the data to apply hyperspeed-specific modalities presents us with tools that are simply unattainable through other avenues of assessment.

This article aims to help change just a few elements in the initial programming based on the athlete’s needs. From here, we can begin to have an even deeper conversation about correlated applications. By providing one or two possibilities per contractile element, we have an incredible foundation of programming adaptations that can help us provide our athletes with very specific training variations—not to mention the vitality this data can give our high-performance departments when accelerated return to play timelines are in demand.

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References

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Loturco I, Pereira L, Kobal R, et al. “Muscle Contraction Velocity: A Suitable Approach to Analyze the Functional Adaptations in Elite Soccer Players.” Journal of Sports Science & Medicine. 2016 Sep.;15(3):483–491.

Macgregor LJ, Hunter AM, Orizio C, Fairweather MM, and Ditroilo M. “Assessment of Skeletal Muscle Contractile Properties by Radial Displacement: The Case for Tensiomyography.” Sports Medicine. 2018 Jul;48(7):1607–1620. doi: 10.1007/s40279-018-0912-6. PMID: 29605838; PMCID: PMC5999145.

Meglič A, Uršič M, Škorjanc A, Đorđević S, and Belušič G. “The Piezo-resistive MC Sensor is a Fast and Accurate Sensor for the Measurement of Mechanical Muscle Activity.” Sensors. 2019; 19(9):2108.

Oster, G. “Muscle Sounds.” Scientific American. 1984;250(3):108–115.

Rodriguez-Ruiz D, Diez-Vega I, Rodriguez-Matoso D, Fernandez-del-Valle M, Sagastume R, and Molina JJ. “Analysis of the Response Speed of Musculature of the Knee in Professional Male and Female Volleyball Players.” BioMed Research International. 2014. 8. 10.1155/2014/239708.

Rojas-Barrionuevo NA, Vernetta-Santana M, Alvariñas-Villaverde M, and López-Bedoya J. “Acute effect of acrobatic jumps on different elastic platforms in the muscle response evaluated through tensiomyography.” Journal of Human Sport and Exercise. 2017;12(3):728–741. 10.14198/jhse.2017.123.17.

Simunic B, Rozman S, and Pišot R. “Detecting the velocity of the muscle contraction.” Biology. 2007.

TMG™ Science for Body Evolution « Quantifying muscle function (tmg-bodyevolution.com)

Valle C. “Tensiomyography: An Update for Sport and Tactical Athletes.” SimpliFaster Blog.

Valle C. “TMG: A Secret Weapon in Sports Performance and Rehabilitation.” SimpliFaster Blog.

Wilson MT, Ryan AMF, Vallance SR, et al. “Tensiomyography Derived Parameters Reflect Skeletal Muscle Architectural Adaptations Following 6-Weeks of Lower Body Resistance Training.” Frontiers in Physiology. 2019;10:1493. Published 2019 Dec 10. doi:10.3389/fphys.2019.01493.

Starting a career as a coach in this field can be exciting and rewarding; it can also, at times, be overwhelming. There will be countless pieces of novel information, assigned tasks, names and faces to learn, and hours spent on your feet that are all part of the process of becoming and continuing to be a strength and conditioning coach. At the end of the day, however, if you are passionate about human health and performance and creating meaningful relationships with others, it will all be worth it.

Plus, we get to wear athletic gear, train ourselves, and not sit behind a desk for a career—pretty cool if you ask me. The first few years as a coach are full of decisions that can lead you down one coaching route or another, and that can make or break you and your experience as a coach in this field. In no particular order, I have listed eleven tips that I either wish I knew before starting my journey or that I have learned through my various experiences over the past two and a half years as an intern and coach.

The experiences I have had in this field have influenced my personal and professional growth, which I attribute to the people I have worked with and for. My career as a Strength and Conditioning coach started with three consecutive internships:

• One with my high school S&C coach in Virginia Beach.
• Another with Cressey Sports Performance in Massachusetts.
• Lastly with Elon University Sports Performance.

Following this string of internships, I went on to pursue a Master’s degree in the 2021-2022 school year at Merrimack College while also serving as a Graduate Fellow Strength and Conditioning coach. In the summer of 2022 I served as the S&C coach for the Brewster Whitecaps in the Cape Cod Collegiate Baseball League. During those two and a half years, I worked with athletes from a wide variety of backgrounds, including high school, collegiate, and professional baseball, softball, soccer, football, track and field, ice hockey, and military/tactical athletes.

To say I learned a lot from these experiences would be an understatement, but I surely left some growth on the table. At times, I was close-minded, stubborn, arrogant, and lacked communication skills—if I had known or appreciated some of the tips I provide below, I am confident I would have squeezed every ounce out of each of these experiences.

Tip #1: Do Your Research

I don’t mean join a research team and work in a lab (although that too can be a valuable experience). Instead, this section is focused on the idea of knowing everything about a place before you decide to apply. Whether it is an internship, a graduate assistantship, or your first job, educating yourself on the culture, the people, the duties and responsibilities expected of you, past interns or employees and why they may have left, benefits the position is or is not offering, location and housing, and much more are vital to ensuring you and the potential employment site are a good fit.

Unfortunately—but also fortunately, which I will discuss in another tip—it is going to be hard to find the perfect spot, so prioritizing what you need from the opportunity should be at the forefront of your decision making process when identifying places to apply.

Tip #2 – The Application and the Interview

For interns, do not worry if your professional work history is not what you would consider competitive. It is likely your first or second experience as a coach, which places looking for interns should understand and perhaps be excited about—you provide them with the opportunity to teach and mentor others, which is really what we are doing as coaches at the end of the day. Before sending in your application, reread it, have someone else go through it, then reread it two more times yourself.

I am not kidding.

Showing an employer right off the bat whether you can follow instructions exactly as they are provided to you for applications/submissions can move you to the interview stage or get you dropped from consideration immediately.

For interns, do not worry if your professional work history is not what you would consider competitive. Share on X

If given the opportunity to do a phone, in-person, or Zoom interview, be on time and dress for the job you want. Be yourself. Answer questions honestly, emphasize your strengths, and be a good person. Ask questions. Both before and during the interview. If you know someone who has applied or worked there before, ask them what to expect so you can prepare.

At the end of the interview, when the interviewer asks if you have any questions, have two to three prepared about the position and perhaps develop another based on something that was discussed during the interview. Not asking questions can make it seem like you know everything already about the experience, and an answer you receive may give you more information that you need to make a decision. If you are offered positions at multiple places, do what is best for you in regards to what factors, benefits, and details you are prioritizing.

Tip #3 – People Come First

To steal a quote from Teddy Roosevelt, “They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” The first task ever given to me as an intern was go in the gym and meet as many people as I could and learn everyone’s name. That same task ended up being the first one at every place I went to. It is impossible to truly connect with an athlete or even cue a lift without first knowing their name. An athlete’s lack of ability to be coached is not always because they do not want to listen—instead, maybe it is because they do not trust or even know the person giving the instruction. I was certainly guilty of this when trying to coach football athletes at Merrimack College on my first day, without ever having a conversation with some of the guys I was coaching.

It is impossible to truly connect with an athlete or even cue a lift without first knowing their name. Share on X

Being a good person and being someone your coworkers and athletes want to be around for an hour, a week, a month, a year, and so on, is incredibly important. Read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. People first, always.

Tip #4 – Listen, Watch, Learn

A little over a year ago, at the end of my first internship, I sat in on a presentation given by Coach Dan Sanzo, who at the time was the Director of Performance at Northeastern University. One thing he said that stuck out to me was that “coaching and training models are never right, some are just less wrong than others.”

I don’t think I quite understood exactly what he meant until I went to my next internship. I went in thinking I knew what they were going to teach me and that I was already a good strength coach. Hello Dunning-Krueger Effect, I had reached the peak of “Mount Stupid.”

Listen to everything those around you are trying to teach you. There is so much to learn but in order to do so, we must put our egos aside and allow others to teach us. Watch. A lot goes on in the weight room and one can learn a lot just from watching an athlete move, watching another coach cue a movement from across the room, or seeing how the flow of a weight room impacts the training experience of the athletes. Mastery is impossible. There is always going to be something else to learn whether you believe it or not. As a coach we are servant leaders. The more we learn, the more we can teach, the more we can serve.

Mastery is impossible. There is always going to be something else to learn whether you believe it or not. Share on X

Lastly, as you are working as an intern, a GA, or a full-time coach, constantly analyze what you do and do not like about where you are. I do not mean go searching for things you dislike about a place, but being aware of these details will help inform your future career decisions. There is something to learn from everything: good and bad, success and failure. Keep seeking out the good things in future jobs and avoid going to places that may resemble the bad qualities of a workplace that you experienced elsewhere.

Tip #5 – Constantly Provide Value

Value is a broad word that means different things to different people. Generally, however, it means being the best intern, coach, and coworker you can possibly be. Carry yourself with integrity, do what you say you will do. Be efficient. Show up early, complete assigned tasks ahead of the completion date, and do things that you know need to be done before being asked to do them. Be a good person. It is hard to provide more value to a staff and a culture than when you can put others in a good mood just based on your presence.

You should never be doing nothing. Constantly find things to do, always be aware of your body language, and remember you are always being evaluated. Lastly, while this should not be the sole reason you apply somewhere, many places will hire from their internship or graduate assistantship pool. Do a really good job and you are more likely to end the volunteer job with a part- or full-time position.

Constantly find things to do, always be aware of your body language, and remember you are always being evaluated. Share on X

Tip #6 – Always Be Networking

You never know who you will come across in your early years as a coach that you may end up working with or be hired by down the road. Every person you have worked with, or that has ever worked for a place you have worked for, is someone in your network. Make an effort to reach out and introduce yourself to as many of them as possible. Try to form meaningful relationships with them as it will strengthen your network and likely allow you to be introduced to their broader network.

Also, make an effort to go to surrounding facilities and schools. Taking an hour or two to go observe other coaches can lead to so many great things. Maybe you learn new programming ideas or cues from watching and listening to another coach, maybe you spark up a conversation and find out they will be hiring in a few months, or maybe you just form a great professional relationship with the staff which may lead to opportunities for collaboration in the future.

Lastly, do not underestimate the power of social media. Follow, repost, DM, and engage with others in the community. Give credit where it is due. Connect with others you otherwise would not be able to due to geographic limitations. Networking is your best friend.

Tip #7 – Branch Out

Going along with the networking, do not be afraid to branch out beyond the S&C community. Making friends and connections with people from other industries can broaden your own skill set, provide you with different points of view to a problem, and expand your network.

Making friends and connections with people from other industries can broaden your own skill set. Share on X

Engage with graphic designers, accountants, engineers, and so on. One day you may want to start your own coaching business, you are going to need to know how to manage money, and engineers know a thing or two about physics and biomechanics which govern the body.

Tip #8 – Communication

Working at a university, in the professional sporting realm, or even in a private training facility, there will be multiple departments of professionals working cooperatively. S&C coaches do not just report to S&C coaches. A performance team consists of sport coaches, S&C coaches, nutritionists, physical therapists, athletic therapists, administration, and athletes themselves.

Ensuring all of these departments are on the same page when it comes to the care and training of the athlete is of the upmost importance. If an athletic department does not have a good system of communication, then the best job possible cannot be achieved. You cannot control if someone else fails to communicate, but you can control:

1. That you communicate clearly and concisely.
2. How you respond to situations in which information was not clearly communicated to you.

Over-communicate, but keep things simple. Provide enough detail, but do not make things hard to comprehend. Ask more questions than you may think are necessary. Leave no doubt.

Tip #9 – Find Outlets

Nobody wants to talk about it, but burnout is a real thing that can make or break a young coach’s career. It is not uncommon to be working 10-12+ hour days throughout the week as well as potentially having weekend training sessions (there are schools and facilities that are much better about scheduling staff, so make that a part of your research when applying if you wish to prioritize your free time).

When you do have time off, get away from the gym. Your identity is more than being a coach. Find things or people that you enjoy doing and being around that have nothing to do with the position you are in. I love being a coach, but going to the driving range between sessions or watching a movie instead of reading an S&C book are simple things I do to appreciate time away from the field.

When you do have time off, get away from the gym. Your identity is more than being a coach. Share on X

Along with finding outlets, set boundaries. Make sure the people you work with, including athletes, know exactly when you are and are not reachable. I had a coworker do this right away at one of my experiences, which I thought was odd—but then I began to envy that decision as time went on.

Tip #10 – Time Management

There are 168 hours in a week. Manage and plan that time out ahead of time. When you start gaining more responsibilities in the gym on top of school work, free time, your own training, sleeping, etc., things like Google Calendar or a planner are valuable tools to keep yourself on track.

Some people say procrastination is the key to creativity, while others say it is better to knock things out immediately in order to make changes or to have free time later. However you manage your time and responsibilities, just make sure you are not holding someone else back or forcing them to carry more of the load.

Lastly, earn the right to say no. This may be contradictory to the point I made above, but as a young coach, every opportunity thrown at you is a learning experience. If your boss asks you to do something, do it. The best ability is availability. As you offer more of your time and support, you will gain trust, reliability, and credibility from those you work with and for. Eventually, as you earn the respect of those around you, it becomes much easier to dedicate your time to where you feel it is most valued, and when you do decide to say no to things, that decision will be respected.

As you earn the respect of those around you, it becomes much easier to dedicate your time to where you feel it is most valued. Share on X

Tip #11 – Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

It does not matter where you are in your coaching career or where you feel you lie on the Dunning-Kruger line, imposter syndrome will likely find you at some point. It is the moment when you tell yourself you are not ready for the responsibilities bestowed upon you.

For me, and I am sure for most coaches, it was when I became a Graduate Fellow and was given my own teams to program for and coach. Fear begins to creep in that you do not know enough about programming, or you ask yourself if you are truly ready to lead a group of athletes that are depending on you to prepare them for sport.

The best way to overcome this mindset is simply to jump in, but also to have a purpose for everything you say, do, or write. Have a why. I remember Coach Nick DiMarco at Elon telling our intern team to have a why for everything you program, and then be able to back that why up again and again. Not only was this great advice for sound programming, but it became great advice when overcoming imposter syndrome. If you know the purpose of the work you have prescribed to a team, then you should be so confident in that work that you can own it and lead a team through it.

Have a why for everything you program, and then be able to back that why up again and again. Share on X

Trust that what you already know about programming, coaching, and so on is enough to do a good job. Stay committed to the learning process. When you make a mistake, analyze what went wrong, ask questions, gather feedback, learn how to prevent the mistake from occurring again, and then accept the fact that mistakes will serve as moments for growth throughout your career.

Putting It All Together

I am by no means a perfect person or professional. I have two and a half years of experience in this field. I have developed as both a person and a professional substantially in that time, which is due to the mistakes I have made and learned from as well as the mentors I have had who invested their time, patience, and knowledge into my growth.

There are eleven tips I focused on, but plenty more could have been included. Part of my passion for this field comes from the constant chances we are given as coaches to learn and to teach. I hope you, as a fellow young strength coach, have learned from some of the tips I have provided. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions and good luck with your upcoming or current positions!

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF

Preparing teenage athletes for the upcoming high school football season is a yearly ritual for coaches across the country. The demands on the athletes are not just physically intense but mentally intense as well. For decades, the traditional thoughts on “conditioning” athletes for these demands included a wide variety of exercises, with selections such as multiple shuttle runs, sets of 100s, bear crawls, and other implements of fatigue used to condition athletes for the sport’s demands. They were also widely believed to build the toughness needed to play the game.

While most programs run training sessions throughout the summer, we all know that many athletes will miss at least part of those sessions. The question facing coaches is how should they account for the highly variable training gap of the athletes once mandatory practices and camps begin? While many athletes will begin camp fully prepared for those challenges following months of attendance at voluntary sessions, others may miss weeks with vacations, travel sports, jobs, or other obligations.

The coach’s ego in many of us would like to say, “well then, they don’t play,” but the reality is that for many programs, that’s not a realistic option. They need the athletes to be not only present once camp begins but also healthy and available. How can coaches be assured that the workload done and capacity built by each athlete meets the demands they will face? On the flip side, how can we be sure that we are not needlessly pushing our athletes past the point of meeting those demands? Are we potentially negatively affecting performance by adding unneeded fatigue to athletes who have already reached their needed load for optimal performance?

For our multidisciplinary performance team at York Comprehensive High School (sports coaches/performance and athletic training staff), wearable GPS for our athletes has been the answer to these questions. GPS has also allowed us to keep our athletes within the optimal ratios of velocity, load, and change-of-direction speeds that mirror those of the sport’s demands but are sometimes left short in sport preparation.

Volume is a great place to start when first dipping your toes into the use of GPS—you can use it to create data-driven, individualized programming to develop optimal work capacity. Share on X

This article is the first in a series of the how and why behind the use of TITAN GPS units. In this installment, I want to focus on using a basic metric that many without access to GPS already use to build work capacity: volume. Volume is a great place to start when first dipping your toes into the use of GPS—it can be used to create data-driven, individualized programming to develop optimal work capacity that meets the demands of a high school football season.

Implementing GPS Data

The answer for our program (and an ever-growing number of programs at the high school level) has been to implement GPS to track our athletes and then use the information we gather to make informed, data-driven decisions on how to train them to be optimally prepared for the demands of the season. GPS can eliminate most of the guesswork and guide coaches to informed decisions. Our primary goal as sports performance professionals is the health and wellness of our athletes, and GPS can not only be an effective tool to drive this goal in-season but also year-round. This ensures athletes are prepared for the challenges of the type of grueling off-season schedule common at the high school level.

One key point I’d like to make is that this article is solely aimed at the high school level. I firmly believe that the main mistake I made in laying out our off-season program before I had GPS to guide me was trying to design a scaled-down, college-level programming plan. What GPS showed me from day 1 was the extreme amount of sheer volume a high school athlete maintains year-round. College coaches may have a block of 4–8 weeks, then an extended non-contact period—those may be sprinkled throughout the year, and the NCAA governs the time they are allotted with the athlete.

At the high school level? That simply isn’t the case in most situations.

In his pregame speech before our week 1 kickoff, our head coach said: “You guys have spent 180 days in school, 90 minutes a day training. We had 16 spring practices, 20 summer workouts, and 20 summer practices. We played 30 passing league games and participated in four lineman challenges. We have practiced for three weeks and played three scrimmages. If we are not ready now, we never will be.” Amen, Coach. Take a second to re-read that…then explain how does continuing to add a few hundred yards of conditioning a week improve performance. If you do, you are probably guessing, whereas GPS allows you to answer those questions with a high level of confidence.

Another challenge faced by coaches who do not use GPS is prescribing a generic volume or rep scheme to athletes who have a wide variance in work done, says @YorkStrength17. Share on X

Another challenge faced by coaches who do not use GPS is prescribing a generic volume or rep scheme to athletes who have a wide variance in work done. Below is an average practice volume in yardage above 2 meters/second.

I can attest that this is just an average in-season practice from week 1 of our regular season. The range is quite varied, from the most at 7553.02 (a two-way starter at WR/FS) all the way down to the least at 2791.03 (backup QB). Eight of the bottom 10 athletes are offensive linemen or interior defensive tackles. The other two? Our starting QB (who ran for well over 1,000 yards last season) and a backup running back.

My preparation prior to GPS would have included ranged volume and distances based on position. This is a random example of a 2017 pre-season week:

The assumptions were close to correct. In general, the bigs need the least prep, and the WR/DB need the most. The QB position is way off: in fact, the in-game needs of our starter in 2021 were between 3,458 and 3,845 yards above 2.0 m/s. Another miss? Eight of the top nine totals were WR/DB guys. However, the fifth-highest total in practice (and it holds true in game capacity as well) was our starting running back.

My point? While my educated guess was accurate for many athletes, other guesses were off. Volume is not the most powerful tool to prepare athletes for demands—we will discuss “player load” in a later article (which is better, in my opinion, because it builds in intensity and time). BUT, if you choose to use volume as a way to progress your athletes toward the demands of the season, as I did, then GPS can be a way to ensure individual athletes are truly prepared for what they will face from a volume standpoint.

Assigning a generic volume prescription and not considering individual demands is a guess. It is also a guess based on a huge variable that’s totally missing. When we put those numbers on paper and lay out the linear wave periodization of volume (as many non-GPS users do), we are attacking it as if every athlete is beginning our session at the same point. But that is simply not true.

Looking at the practice above as an example, if we had run 400 yards of shuttles after practice, that would have taken our top-volume small-skill athlete to 7,900+ yards and our very lowest small-skill athlete to 3,191. The issues?

1. What if our backup QB has to become our starter suddenly? That 3,191 may end up being too low to match his increased load in practice.
2. For this particular athlete, 7,553 is above what we know he requires to meet the demands of game or practice. In fact, my suggestion for him would be to go home and recover, not add fatigue to a work capacity load that already exceeds need.

Another possible scenario involves athletes who have missed practices or workout sessions. Should they be dosed with the same prescription as the athlete with 21,000 yards during that same time?

Using volume to build work capacity has definite value. But we should not pretend that doing so without data to guide us and digging into each athlete’s acute and chronic loads is anything more than a best-educated guess.

In the three years we have been using GPS, we have all but eliminated any extra conditioning after practice. We have also seen little to no cramping in the early season. In addition, our non-contact soft tissue injuries have dropped significantly (according to internal reports). At the time of this writing, we are in the early part of our season, which began with spring ball in May. We have had zero missed practices due to non-contact soft tissue injuries.

In the three years we have been using GPS, we have all but eliminated any extra conditioning after practice. We have also seen little to no cramping in the early season, says @YorkStrength17. Share on X

While this data is purely anecdotal, I firmly believe in our multidisciplinary approach and its positive effect on athlete health and wellness. With the data to guide us, anything and everything we do has a definitive reason. We can adjust practices to increase or decrease volume and intensity to match the actual needs of the athletes.

Instead of doing things because we always have or because it makes the coaches comfortable, we can dial in and work toward an optimal high-performance training plan. We can focus on intentional acceleration or max velocity development and not be concerned with whether we are conditioning or not. When we do see a need for increased work capacity, we have the ability to know which athletes are in need and target those needs.

Using volume to guide programming is just one way to progress your athletes. It is the most basic use of the data that can be collected. In the next installment of this series, I will dive into using player load (PL) and acute:chronic work ratio (ACWR). Using these metrics has allowed us to become even more precise in preparing our athletes for the demands of not just playing but preparing for sport.

Using PL brings intensity and time into the picture. ACWR gives you a way to look at the bigger picture using PL. I will also cover how we use high-speed (90%+ of max velocity) sprint data and high-speed acceleration and deceleration as guides to fill the buckets that practice may not always succeed in doing. GPS guides the way to make these decisions without guesswork.

I believe each athlete should be prepared to meet the specific demands of their sport. My mistake before GPS was feeling that if I didn’t build the capacity for work needed by our athletes, then it wasn’t taking place. Having the data available has shown me that simply is not the case. In fact, much of the time, what I was adding to the athlete was above and beyond their need.

My mistake before GPS was feeling that if I didn’t build the work capacity needed by our athletes, it wasn’t taking place. Having the data has shown me that isn’t the case, says @YorkStrength17. Share on X

Do I believe it was detrimental to the athletes? Maybe, maybe not. However, our top priority needs to be “do no harm.” Unnecessary activity done well above and beyond need not only takes time away from the attributes that could positively affect performance but also delays the recovery process that most high school athletes struggle with organically. Instead, the focus can be on providing the things the athlete does not get from off-season preparation within their sport. GPS helps increase our value to the sports coaching staff and our ability to run an athlete-centered program.

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF

Loading heavy bars every week isn’t feasible for many athletes, given their limited time constraints or available equipment. And don’t forget about the increase in spinal loading that some just can’t tolerate.

Also, let’s be honest—sometimes, loading and unloading the bars can take more time than the actual lifts. If you are tight on time or nursing a cranky back, this can be a setup for disaster.

By now, we all recognize the benefits of single-leg work—a 2015 study, “Load Comparison Ratio in Single and Double Leg Movements” (Graham-Smith, 2015), made a compelling case that one-leg squats can be a powerful strength and muscle builder as well.

So, welcome to the skater squat as a time-saving alternative.

If there are any flaws in technique—whether it’s valgus, lumbar flexion, core weakness, or passive foot mechanics—skater squats will expose them. Share on X

People usually don’t do skater squats simply because they are humbling and hard to do! If there are any flaws in technique—whether it’s valgus, lumbar flexion, core weakness, or passive foot mechanics—skater squats will expose them. They also require a bit of mobility and technique, which adds to the normal hardgainer’s NO GO list. Skater squats give high levels of intramuscular activation with each rep, which means they can recruit many motor units needed for stability and strength. They are also naturally joint- and low-back-friendly, which every strength coach should have highlighted for their programs.

An injured athlete is a recipe for disaster, and skater squats will always be a viable option to add cross-symmetry stability. Athletes in contact sports especially need this when on the field of play.

Here are ways to master this deadlift variation for comparable strength gains without the added low back stress.

Use a Counterbalance

Use tiny 2-pound weights or dumbbells in your hands as a counterbalance, or squeeze a tennis ball between your hamstring and calf on the non-working leg. This will help keep the back leg in a better, tighter position and prevent you from turning it into a reverse lunge.

Next, reach with your hands through an invisible line coming out of the middle toe of your working leg and toward the wall in front of you without letting your back foot touch the ground. Then, drive your hands down as you push through your front foot to return to the starting position.

Start by stacking a few Airex pads for your back knee and lower them as you get stronger to increase the range of motion.

Studies on Single-Leg Work

In a recent study, researchers challenged the assumption that the load taken on by the working leg during one-leg squats is half that of bilateral squats (Speirs, 2016). To do so, they used a model based on segmental weight distributions (load acting above or rotating about the hip joint) with force data to determine how much true load the legs take on in both movements.

They discovered two things:

1. The combined body weight that acts above the hips during unilateral movements is 16% greater than during bilateral movements (84% vs. 68%).
2. Unilateral movements equate to 1.62x the intensity (per leg) of bilateral movements (in sum).

What is really forgotten is how single-leg work can have a direct carryover to an athlete’s sport. When you think about it, we’re not often on two legs when running, sprinting, shuffling, or jumping. Unilateral lifting can promote corresponding gains in acceleration and strength when replicated well in the weight room.

Another point to mention is how metabolically demanding single-leg work can be. Since we are asking to provoke hypertrophic gains in two limbs, the duration of the work sets last longer, which requires more ATP and creatine to promote more strength. Because of this, single-leg training can have a heavier load of fatigue compared to bilateral training, and some research has even suggested that single-leg training can have higher levels of power and bar speed when trained appropriately (Eliassen, 2018).

So now let’s talk about a few variations of my favorite skater squat and WHY we love it for a deadlift alternative.

Just have a look at this side-by-side video…

Video 1. Skater squat comparison.

Look familiar?

Try out these skater squat variations for some serious single-leg strength, and you can watch your deadlift get stronger without actually deadlifting. Share on X

Additionally, try out these variations for some serious single-leg strength, and you can watch your deadlift get stronger without actually deadlifting.

1. Landmine Skater Squat

Video 2. Hold a barbell in the hand opposite to the leg you’re working, positioned a few inches in front of your torso. Introducing contralateral loading increases glute recruitment and challenges hip and core stability. These are really tough, though, so be conservative on the weight. You may actually want to start with the empty bar as you adjust to the offset loading.

2. Sandbag Skater Squat

Video 3. This variation challenges you a bit more with an increase in intra-abdominal pressure, making it harder to brace and stay upright.

3. 1.5 Rep

Video 4. Squat all the way down, come halfway back up, squat all the way down again, and come all the way up. That’s one rep. Now do that 5–8 times. That’s one set. These are a quick way to get a lot of serious leg burn and improve motor control, with the nervous system being challenged quite a bit by having to retrain the brain on what the full rep entails.

4. Zercher (Front-Loaded) Skater Squat

Video 5. The Zercher skater squat is tough for anyone wanting to work on symmetry and balance. The loading distribution makes them quite challenging.

5. Deficit Skater Squat

Video 6. Before adding load, I actually prefer to increase the range of motion slightly (provided, of course, that it doesn’t cause pain). When you do a regular skater squat standing on the floor, the femur usually ends up being a few inches short of parallel at the bottom, especially if you put a pad underneath the rear leg (which you definitely should do).

Standing on a 4-inch aerobic step will allow most people to get down to parallel or even slightly below, depending on your body’s mobility allowance.

If doing this causes pain or is too challenging, stick to the floor and build there, or even work on smaller ranges. Never force square pegs into round holes!

6. Pause Skater Squat

Video 7. Pausing each rep at the bottom makes it harder by killing the stretch reflex, and it also forces you to control the eccentric portion of the rep to avoid free-falling down to the floor.

I love these also for an increase in mind-muscle connection. For athletes, the benefit of unilateral lifts can be for the simple reason of load and volume. Athletes, during the season especially, need to be careful about volume and load/intensity. Skater squats can be a perfect exercise to fill the gaps to provide an awesome training stimulus that can very easily mimic the sport of that individual. More often than not, athletes are on one leg while running, sprinting, and fighting for positions.

Here are a few regressions you can use to get better at doing the standard versions. It’s a good idea to start small and slowly improve on working your way up to unassisted variations once you can get these down.

7. Slider Skater Squat

Video 8. I love this one, as it is very close to the reverse lunge but with a slightly different torso angle.

The key here is to put as little weight as possible on the rear leg and instead focus on keeping your weight on the heel of the working leg.

8. Eccentric ONLY

Video 9. With the eccentric version, you’re just lowering down on one leg and standing back up on two. It takes a bit of practice to think about, but the eccentric focus can give you a better trade-off than the real thing.

The big thing here is to control the eccentric and not just freefall to the floor.

Programming

Since the skater is a “hybrid” exercise that really is both knee -and hip-dominant, you can program them effectively in many ways. You can even get a little creative and make a claim to help your mobility by adding a variation like this to improve hip external rotation and stability.

Skater Mobility Drill

Video 10. They’re more hip-dominant than a traditional squat or single-leg “pistol” type squat and more knee-dominant than a traditional deadlift or single-leg Romanian deadlift.

The skaters are a super joint-friendly option, so I truly find them great to program more frequently. You can use them as primers for heavier squat or deadlift days, or you can use them as a stand-alone exercise and work on loading. Either way, they are a back-friendly choice that can improve your lifts in more ways than one.

The skaters are a super joint-friendly option, so I truly find them great to program more frequently. Share on X

When it comes to rep ranges, stick to 5–12 reps—that seems to be the sweet spot. Anything more and you risk form and a mental dislike that might have you never want to do them again.

So when you hit the gym this week, don’t forget that you can get effective results from using the skater. In addition to boosting your deadlift, you can improve hip strength, stability, and power!

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References

Eliassen W, Saeterbakken AH, and van den Tillaar R. “Comparison of Bilateral and Unilateral Squat Exercises on Barbell Kinematics and Muscle Activation.” International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy. 2018 Aug;13(5):871–881.

Graham-Smith P, Natera A, and Jarvis M. “Load Comparison Ratio in Single and Double Leg Movements.” English Institute of Sport, UK (2015).

Isik O and Doğan l. “Effects of bilateral or unilateral lower-body resistance exercises on markers of skeletal muscle damage.” Biomedical Journal. 2018 Dec;41(6):364–368.

Moran J, Ramirez-Campillo R, Liew B, et al. “Effects of Bilateral and Unilateral Resistance Training on Horizontally Orientated Movement Performance: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.” Sports Medicine. 2021 Feb;51(2):225–242.

NSCA, TR Baechle and RW Earle, eds. Essentials of strength training and conditioning 3rd ed. 2008; Human Kinetics.

Rhea MR, Kenn JG, Peterson MD, et al. “Joint-Angle Specific Strength Adaptations Influence Improvements in Power in Highly Trained Athletes. Human Movement. 2016;17(1).

Speirs DE, Bennett MA, Finn CV, and Turner AP. “Unilateral vs. Bilateral Squat Training for Strength, Sprints, and Agility in Academy Rugby Players.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2016 Feb;30(2):386–392.