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The Impact of Altitude Training on Glycolytic Enzyme Activity

Altitude training is challenging but beneficial for cyclists preparing for their next big event. Cycling at high elevations significantly impacts the body and forces it to adapt. Therefore, some athletes arrive early to acclimate to the conditions.

The impact on glycolytic enzyme activity is one of the most significant differences in altitude and sea-level training. Here’s what cyclists need to know about their physiological changes in high elevations and how their training should adapt.

How Altitude Training Impacts Glycolytic Enzyme Activity

Trainers and researchers focus on red blood cell count at high elevations because of the significant increase in red blood cells. Research shows that high-altitude environments increase red blood cell mass, and athletes may need up to three weeks to acclimate. However, glycolytic enzyme activity is sometimes overlooked in cyclists. This bodily process drastically impacts performance at altitude.

First, cyclists experience metabolic adaptation when they train in high elevations. Hypobaric hypoxia challenges the body’s oxygen levels and tissue metabolism. Sometimes it depends on the athlete’s genetics and their acclimation to the climate.

Living in high-altitude areas alters metabolic function and makes it easier to perform. A 2020 Current Opinion in Endocrine and Metabolic Research study finds that long-term residence in high elevations enhances glycolysis for the EPAS1 gene.

Most cyclists see different glycolytic enzyme activity because the high altitude alters phosphofructokinase production. This enzyme is less present in the body due to the hypoxic environment, considering the metabolism focuses more on aerobics.

Altitude training makes the mitochondria denser because it responds to oxidative stress and higher rates of ATP hydrolysis. Share on X

When training at high elevations, the body relies on glycolysis but also focuses on the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle when oxygen is insufficient. A 2023 Science of the Environment study finds that hypobaric hypoxia exposure improves the TCA cycle, whereas the conditions inhibit glycolysis. The researchers attributed pyruvate acid to the stimulation, lending an explanation to cyclists and their bodies’ reactions.

The mitochondria is another critical consideration for glycolytic activity. Cyclist’s bodies require oxygen despite the limited availability, so they rely on this part of the cell for necessary energy. Altitude training makes the mitochondria denser because it responds to oxidative stress and higher rates of ATP hydrolysis. Cyclists need their cells to produce more mitochondria to maintain high energy levels while training in elevated areas.

It’s also essential for cyclists to understand what happens with their lactate tolerance in altitude training. Energy systems produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP) despite the lack of oxygen, and the muscles simultaneously build lactic acid. Cyclists are familiar with this because some believe it causes a burning feeling. However, the body converts it to glucose and produces more ATP to increase stamina.

The body faces the challenge of a lower maximal lactate steady state (MLSS) when training at high altitudes. Therefore, cyclists see their CO2 production and VO2 decrease. A 2024 American Journal of Physiology study examines the differences among cyclists at 2,222 meters, 1,111 meters and sea level. The researchers find that the athletes at 2,222 meters had a significantly lower MLSS power output than the other groups, demonstrating the profound effects of elevation.

What an Altitude Training Regimen Should Contain

While cycling is more complicated, the high altitude has some advantages. For example, consistent training at these heights produces better performances once cyclists return to typical elevations. Oxygen capacity depends on the person, but long training periods improve this metric and lead to better results.

Consistent training at these high altitude produces better performances once cyclists return to typical elevations. Oxygen capacity depends on the person, but long training periods... lead to better results. Share on X

Altitude training can push cyclists to their limits, so it’s critical to have a targeted training regimen. The conditions at high elevations take some factors out of their control and force their bodies to change. Therefore, athletes must be ready for the harsh elements.

Optimized training may depend on the athlete’s DNA and the specific conditions they endure at altitude. That said, research has supported particular types of training to support them. A 2023 Applied Sciences study found cyclists in hypoxia high-intensity interval training (HHIT) experienced greater performance improvements than the normoxia group at a lower elevation. This result gives cyclists direction for enhanced training methods.

Data Source: “The Effects of Intermittent Hypoxic Training on Aerobic Capacity and Endurance Performance in Cyclists.”

What should the HHIT training look like? Cyclists can learn from a 2020 Frontiers in Sports and Active Living study. In this analysis, the cyclists started with three weeks of endurance training before moving to a hypoxic chamber. Then, the athletes did five repeated sprint training in hypoxia (RSH) sessions over 10 days. Each workout required them to execute seven all-out sprints for six seconds before leveraging active recovery.

The exercise started with a 12-minute warmup and two blocks of seven sprints. After the first half, the cyclists had a 10-minute recovery stage before the third and fourth sections of sprints. The final section included a 10-minute active cooldown to end the workout.

Once complete, the researchers analyzed the power output, heart rate, peripheral oxygen saturation (SpO2) and other critical metrics. The study found the athletes’ basal SpO2 increased by 2.5 percentage points between the first and fifth sessions. Was the workout satisfactory as future guidance for athletes? The researchers concluded the RSH intervention was an efficient workout for professional cyclists and improved total work.

How should carbohydrate intake differ when training at altitude? Research suggests it should be a 35% increase to improve performance, says Jack Shaw. Share on X

The 2023 Applied Sciences study discovered a few other workouts are conducive to athletes training at high altitudes. While intense training is necessary, the researchers also found submaximal exercises aided physiological adaption for athletes. For example, cyclists should integrate tempo rides into their regimen. This exercise could include a 60-minute ride using about 80% of the maximum heart rate, thus increasing their lactate threshold.

Submaximal exercises are advantageous for athletes because they construct a cyclist’s aerobic base and introduce workouts that reduce the risk of overtraining. While less intense, these regimens are critical to a cyclist’s fitness. A 2022 Biology study found endurance submaximal exercise in hypoxia improved metabolic and cardiac responses for healthy men compared to their normoxia training.

Considerations for Altitude Training

Physiological changes and training regimens are critical for altitude training. Additionally, cyclists must focus on other factors to optimize their performance in high elevations. Gear is an excellent starting point, because it can make the cycling regimen easier.

For instance, cyclists should wear compression clothing because it improves oxygen levels despite the elevation. This gear is most important on the lower body—especially the quads and calves—to improve blood flow and reduce the effects of muscle vibrations. Lactic acid is a by-product of glycolysis, so compression clothing is necessary for optimal performance.

Another consideration for cyclists is their residence and practice locations. Sustained altitude training requires living in or close to an area with high elevation. Cyclists in Salt Lake City, Utah, or Mammoth Lakes, California, may have the upper hand because of the geography. However, there are solutions for athletes who live far from these advantageous areas.

One of the choices cyclists have is an altitude mask. This solution may alienate athletes because of its reputation, with some questioning its efficacy when improving oxygen capacity. However, relying on research and leveraging professional insight is vital before deciding whether to use it. A 2024 Sports Sciences for Health study cleared the air on whether cyclists should leverage altitude masks for their training.

The researchers divided the cyclists into two groups, with half wearing the RSH mask and the other half using an RSH tent. Each group tested their sprint number and power output until failure for eight sessions. The study also measured the athletes’ VO2, SpO2, heart rate, core temperature, and muscle oxygen saturation (SmO2). The participants experienced improved anaerobic performance with the altitude mask, thus proving the tool’s worthiness.

Image Source: “Mask vs. tent: effect of hypoxia method on repeated sprint ability and physiological parameters in cyclists.” Creative Commons License here.

The study also validated using RSH tents, considering the cyclists’ performance improved with both methods. However, the tent excelled over the mask because it improved their core adaption. Ultimately, the best method for cyclists depends on their available resources and preferences. The tent and mask methods require large air compressors to treat the air and mimic high altitude, so coaches must consider their budgets for the best option.

Dietary Considerations in Altitude Training

The final considerations for cyclists in altitude training should be their diets. These unfamiliar conditions require athletes to consume more calories because their bodies work harder

to produce optimal power. Cyclists should focus on carbohydrates the most out of the micronutrients because they’re the body’s primary energy source. If not, they risk underfueling their bodies and compromising athletic performance.

How should carbohydrate intake differ when training at altitude? Research suggests it should be a 35% increase to improve performance. A 2020 Frontiers in Sports and Active Living article investigated the effects of carbohydrate intake on Olympic athletes during altitude training. The researchers found a 35% increase in carbohydrates improved their diet composition but did not significantly affect blood metrics.

While the snacks didn’t drastically change the blood dimensions in the study, cyclists should focus on micronutrients when training at high elevations. For instance, iron is a crucial part of their diet because it aids red blood cell production. Athletes should prioritize leafy greens, meat, legumes and other fortified meals. Vitamins B, C, E and magnesium are other small but integral parts of altitude training.

Some cyclists benefit from supplements during hypoxia, so they’re worth considering for coaches and athletes. A 2024 Exercise, Fitness and Human Performance and Health study examined common nutritional supplements to determine their effectiveness for cyclists in hypoxia training. While sildenafil and ischemic preconditioning (IPC) were not beneficial, the researchers found NO3 and beetroot (BR) optimized endurance.

Optimizing Altitude Training and Scrutinizing the Details

Coaches and their athletes should leave no stone unturned when searching for a competitive edge. One detail cyclists should pay attention to when altitude training is their glycolytic enzyme activity. High elevations make this bodily function less prevalent and significantly change the body’s metabolism.

These conditions require athletes to optimize their training and diet for peak performance. Cyclists should use hypoxia chambers and altitude masks and increase their carbohydrate intake when preparing for altitude competitions. A holistic approach is necessary to conquer the high altitude and deliver the best athletic performance.

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Reference

Chang, W.-Y., Wu, K.-C., Yang A.-L., et al. (2023). Simulated Altitude Training and Sport Performance: Protocols and Physiological Effects. Applied Sciences. 13(20).

Liu, G., Li, Y., Lao, N, et al. (2023). Energy Metabolic Mechanisms for High Altitude Sickness: Downregulation of Glycolysis and Upregulation of the Lactic Acid/Amino Acid-Pyruvate-TCA Pathways and Fatty Acid Oxidation. Science of the Total Environment. 894(10).

Faiss, R., & Rapillard, A. (2020). Repeated Sprint Training in Hypoxia: Case report of Performance Benefits in a Professional Cyclist. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living.

Koivisto-Mørk, A. E., Paur, I., Paulsen, G., et al. (2020). Dietary Adjustments to Altitude Training in Elite Endurance Athletes; Impact of a Randomized Clinical Trial With Antioxidant-Rich Foods. Frontiers in Sports and Active living. 2, 106.

Park, H. Y., Kim, J. W., & Nam, S. S. (2022). Metabolic, Cardiac, and Hemorheological Responses to Submaximal Exercise under Light and Moderate Hypobaric Hypoxia in Healthy Men. Biology, 11(1), 144.

Ramchandani, R., Florica, I.T., Alemi, A., et al. (2024). Review of Athletic Guidelines for High-Altitude Training and Acclimatization. High Altitude Medicine & Biology 25(2).

Vasquez-Bonilla, A.A., Rojas-Valverde, D., Feliu-Ilvonen, J.M. et al. (2024). Mask vs. Tent: Effect of Hypoxia Method on Repeated Sprint Ability and Physiological Parameters in Cyclists. Sport Sci Health.

Yu, C., Tsai, S. Liao, Y., et al. (2024). Exploring the Potential Benefits of Interventions When Addressing Simulated Altitude Hypoxia During Male Cyclist Sports: A Systematic Review. Applied Sciences. 14(7).

Profiling and Training the Vertical Jump to Improve Multidirectional Speed

Blog| ByTommy Munday

Most Strength and Conditioning (S&C) coaches primarily aim to design gym programmes which yield positive results and transfer to improved sport performance. In many cases, improved multidirectional speed is a key performance indicator for a successful S&C programme.

Within my role, I work as a private S&C coach with a variety of individual athletes, teams and coaches on athletics, soccer, tennis, netball and field hockey. My job is to identify potential limiting factors which may aid or hinder speed performance, work out how to measure these, and ultimately select the most optimal way to improve them.

From data I’ve collected over the past five years with a variety of athletes, I haven’t found a metric which correlates with speed performance measures more strongly than the countermovement jump (CMJ), says @tommymunday1. Share on X

The Vertical Jump and It’s Link with Speed

Cue the vertical jump. With performance determined by rapid and forceful hip and knee extension, it is clear to see some performance factors which overlap and aid with multidirectional speed.

Jump height is determined by the amount of impulse and force an athlete is able to generate when the only resistance is their own bodyweight.

Rapid and forceful hip and knee extension has some crossover with accelerating, decelerating, and even top speed qualities.

As part of training and testing, I measure speed using timing gates and StatSports GPS technology, and use Output Sports or OptoJump data for measuring jump height or reactive strength. From data I’ve collected over the past five years with a variety of athletes, I haven’t found a metric which correlates with speed performance measures more strongly than the countermovement jump (CMJ). Depending on the test, distance, and population, explained variance is typically moderate to very strong, with jump height being a good predictor of an athlete’s capacity to be quick.

The table below summarises various bits of open-source data and numbers I’ve collected or found from a variety of populations.

GPS Splits — Figure 1. Table for explained variance.

Split CMJ — Figure 2. Chart displaying the relationship between 0-10m sprint and CMJ height.

Within soccer, acceleration and speed in the first 3-5 steps are crucial to create or deny space within time constraints, so a link between CMJ height and 0-10m speed is useful information when a coach wants to increase the chance of developing this quality.

When we look at the data within the same population (youth soccer), we can see that as distance increases, the strength of the association decreases. Logically, this makes sense—as distance increases, ground contact times become shorter, a focus shifts from muscular “pushing” to tendon “bouncing” and qualities which support a higher vertical jump seem to become less relevant, but still explain some relatively high variation of performance.

A Damien Harper study from 2020 finds that athletes who can jump higher also have better deceleration performances and qualities than their lower-jumping counterparts. For the most part, we can be reasonably confident that training which moves the needle on an athlete’s jump height will improve qualities which can also contribute to development of speed in multiple directions.

What Kind of Training Does an Athlete Need to Improve Their Jump Height?

My preference is to start by measuring an athlete’s countermovement jump with the hands on their hips. I’ll then get a score, but without context this isn’t much use to me.

The next job is to repeat the test with different task constraints, to work out why they are jumping the height they are, and to infer how to best improve this.

For the most part, we can be reasonably confident that training which moves the needle on an athlete’s jump height will improve qualities which can also contribute to development of speed in multiple directions, says @tommymunday1. Share on X

Depending on the athlete, selected development exercises can either focus on maximum strength or more ballistic-focused rate of force development (RFD) work. This will usually follow a more concentric or eccentric theme to further challenge qualities which contribute to development of the jump—and in turn contribute to multidirectional speed.

Heavier resistance work such as squats or deadlifts may be appropriate, equally alongside loaded ballistic work such as power cleans and loaded jumps, or bodyweight jumps often using boxes in various formats. The detail is in selecting the appropriate exercise, intensity and volume to ensure continual progress is made.

Eccentric or Concentric? Paused Squat Jump—Eccentric Utilisation

After the initial CMJ, the next assessment is to repeat the test with a three-second pause at the bottom of the jump, followed by a rapid acceleration out of the hole. This variation relies much more heavily on rapid concentric force production, recruiting motor units rapidly without a prior alert from the CNS, created from the eccentric stretch-reflex.

Video 1. CMJ Testing.

Video 2. Paused Squat Jump Testing.

The difference between the paused squat jump and the countermovement jump can be quite useful info. This is often referred to as the “eccentric utilisation ratio,” as it indicates how effectively an athlete has loaded up when descending and how effectively their body has used the benefit of the eccentric phase to generate a more forceful propulsion back out.

This ratio can be calculated from:

(CMJ – SJ) / CMJ

Athletes with large differences between the two jumps (>15%) often appear to be very elastic in their nature, often taking some time and using lots of range to wind up and power out of the jump.

Athletes with small differences (<10%) often appear to be quite explosive and potentially don’t use lots of range or speed during their eccentric phase of the jump. Athletes who are eccentrically weaker or slower may have little difference and not benefit much from the eccentric phase of the jump.

Athletes with large differences between the two jumps (>15%) often appear to be very elastic in their nature, often taking some time and using lots of range to wind up and power out of the jump, says @tommymunday1. Share on X

It should be noted that there is no research linking EUR performance and sport performance. For that reason, a high or low EUR wouldn’t mean an athlete is automatically fast or slow. I’m, therefore, not too concerned about comparing EURs between athletes, but it can be very useful when comparing an athlete against themself to help identify what we will specifically work on to target their CMJ.

My preference is to prescribe more eccentrically-themed gym work for athletes in the second category, and more concentrically- or isometrically-themed gym work for athletes in the first.

For athletes between the two, they’ll tend to do a bit of both, depending on what the programme allows and can cater to.

EUR – General rule of thumb

<10% – Eccentric-themed gym work
>10% – Concentric-themed gym work

Once we’ve identified a more appropriate contraction type for a programme, the next job is to work out whether a programme should prioritise developing the magnitude or rate of force development more.

Establishing a Loaded Jump Profile—Does the Athlete Need to Work on Max Strength or RFD?

After the hands-on-hips CMJ, we can again change the task’s constraints by adding additional load in the form of the trap bar jump. This is biomechanically very similar, and for this reason we see strong linear trends when plotting height against additional load.

Figure 3. Loaded jump profile: the steepness of the trend line provides coaches the ability to infer a lot about an athlete’s profile.

I’ll typically get an athlete to perform sets of one to three trap bar jumps with increasing loads for between four and seven sets, aiming for an R² value of 0.97 or higher within a trendline.

Video 3. Creating a loaded jump profile with the Bosco Index.

I’ll tend to keep loading an athlete up by 5-20kg at a time and keep doing sets until they are jumping less than 50% of their original unloaded CMJ.

As load increases, an athlete is afforded more time and mass to generate higher forces over extended time frames, provided they have the maximum strength qualities to do so.

Due to a lack of maximum strength, athletes with steep trendlines will have their jump heights drop off very quickly under increased additional load.

Performance improvements are often fairly predictable and can be normally attributed to a key exercise which has been used, says @tommymunday1. Share on X

Athletes with a shallower trendline will have their jump height drop off more gradually. With longer contraction times afforded, they are able to generate higher forces and impulses to move themselves plus heavier additional loads with some decent momentum. However, when only their own bodyweight (and less time) is available as resistance, they may lack the RFD qualities to recruit motor units rapidly and demonstrate their strength in an unloaded vertical jump.

Athletes in the second category should prioritise exercises which encourage and allow them to generate the high forces they are capable of in reduced time frames.

Athletes in the first category, however, should prioritise max strength training, and lift the lid on the amount of force they are able to generate through motor unit recruitment and, in some cases, muscular size.

The Bosco Index

We can quantify the steepness of the trendline using the Bosco Index. When an athlete first comes in, we’ll take their body mass. Let’s say it’s 80kg. We’ll then use the load vs. jump height trendline to forecast what they would jump with 1 x their body mass, or 80kg additional load. This is then divided by their CMJ.

Bosco’s Index for this loaded jump is recommended to sit at 0.33, or one-third of their CMJ. That is, an athlete jumping 45cm should jump at least 15cm with 1x their body mass as additional load.

If they can, this removes the doubt that maximum strength is a limiting factor to their jump performance. If they can’t, they can most likely still benefit from getting stronger.

Even though this research was published in the early 90s, it’s stood the test of time. From the hundreds of profiles I’ve collected over the past few years, the mean, median and mode average value for the Bosco Index sits at 33%.

An interesting case study which brings this data to life is two U18 sprinters who performed these tests.

Athlete Comparison — Figure 4. Both had very similar 100m personal bests and jump heights.

Athlete A had a very shallow trend line, and was relatively not affected too much by additional load.

Athlete B, however, was very affected by additional load, dropping off rapidly. We can infer that Athlete B can jump high because they’re able to access a lot of the force they can generate quickly, unlike athlete A, who is able to generate high forces but was lacking the ability to recruit and access this quickly.

Bosco Index – general rule of thumb

< 0.33 – Prioritise max strength
>0.33 – Prioritise ballistic work / RFD

Putting It Together

Exercise categories can form a quadrant, adopting both themes to address an athlete’s development area for a higher vertical jump and improved qualities to contribute to speed development.

Exercise Spectrum — Figure 5. This table summarises some examples for exercise selection.

I’ll typically run with an exercise as a key lift for a session 1-3 x per week for four weeks, then repeat the tests.

Case Study — What Does this Look Like in Practice?

Testing on an appropriate day allows the coach to track change and adaptation with an athlete.

An example case study would be some recent work with a senior professional soccer goalkeeper with a good training age and extensive background for S&C. Below you can see the initial testing results, programme, and outcome. The athlete’s results were as follows:

CMJ – 49.2cm
SJ – 45cm
EUR – 9%
Jump @ 1 x BW – 17.7
Bosco Index – 36%
Outcome for training theme – Eccentric – Ballistic

Two key exercises were a depth jump from a 50-60cm box and a Trap Bar CMJ at a load which yielded the most impulse. The aim was to improve the rate of eccentric force production—with the athlete loading more forcefully and more quickly.

KPI Tracking — Figure 6. Key performance changes after a four-week block.

After four weeks of eccentric themed training with a ballistic emphasis, significant improvements were made in the CMJ and SJ, although we can see that they were more pronounced in the CMJ, with the athlete now using the benefit of the eccentric phase more effectively.

The next phase would focus on concentric-ballistic work, based off the athlete’s new profile.

For the past 2-3 years, I’ve been using this programming method with a number of athletes to make consistent, long-term improvements with the CMJ. Manipulations in volume and intensity are made around key competitions, but periodisation around training themes is largely unplanned and follows the profiling and testing data.

Performance improvements are often fairly predictable and can be normally attributed to a key exercise which has been used. For example, after a block of max strength work, there will be greater improvements in loaded jump performance than there will in the CMJ. After a block of ballistic work, the loaded jump tends to maintain or very often there will be a slight drop in performance, representing a slight reduction in max strength. However, this allows the coach to reintroduce this as a stimulus and keep making consistent improvements with the athlete.

References

Bosco, C. (1999). Strength Assessment With the Bosco’s Test. Italian Society of Sport Science. https://www.scribd.com/document/215051255/Bosco-Strength-Assessment-1999

Harper DJ, Cohen DD, Carling C, Kiely J. Can Countermovement Jump Neuromuscular Performance Qualities Differentiate Maximal Horizontal Deceleration Ability in Team Sport Athletes? Sports. 2020; 8(6):76.

NFL Combine Data: www.profootballreference.com.

How to Get a Higher Vertical with the Skyhook Contact Mat

Blog| ByEric Richter

Jumping high is a big deal in sports.

Whether you’re into basketball, volleyball, or track, having a good vertical jump can make a difference.

One great tool to help you jump higher is the Skyhook Contact Mat.

Let’s check it out in more detail, seeing how you can get a higher vertical with the Skyhook Contact Mat!

Understanding Vertical Jump Mechanics

To jump high, you need strong legs, quick movements, and good form.

Let’s break down the key components of a vertical jump:

Strength: Strong leg muscles, especially the quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves, are key for a powerful jump. Exercises like squats and lunges help build this type of strength.

Power: Power is the combination of strength and speed. Plyometric exercises, like box jumps and jump squats, train your muscles to generate force quickly. Strength vs. power isn’t the same thing, and both are needed to have the best possible vert.

Technique: Proper jumping technique involves a deep squat, a quick arm swing, and a powerful push-off from the toes.

Flexibility: Flexible muscles and joints allow for a greater range of motion. Stretching and mobility exercises can improve your jumping ability.

Balance and Coordination: Good balance and coordination help you control your body during the jump and land safely. Drills that build your balance can improve your vertical jump.

Features of the Skyhook Contact Mat

To get the most out of jump training with the Skyhook Contact Mat, we have to take a look at some of its features:

Design & Portability

The Skyhook Contact Mat is tough and durable.

It’s built to last and can be used on different surfaces, making it a versatile tool for any setting.

It also has a handle, making it easy to carry around.

The mat is big enough for comfortable jumps, measuring 31” x 31”.

Technological Capabilities

This mat connects to your devices through Bluetooth.

It gives real-time data on your jumps, like how high you jump, how long you stay in the air, and how quickly you push off the ground.

It also measures the Reactive Strength Index (RSI), which is a key metric for jump performance.

You can store and analyze your data, create team rosters, and export data easily.

Usability

The mat provides immediate feedback, which helps you see how you’re doing and stay motivated.

It offers free cloud storage to track your progress over time.

It’s compatible with both iOS and Android devices, and there are no extra license fees.

Tracking & Measuring Capabilities

The Skyhook Contact Mat measures several key metrics that are essential for understanding and improving your vertical jump performance:

Vertical Jump Height: This is the most straightforward measure, indicating how high you can jump. It’s important for sports like basketball and volleyball where jumping ability is key.

Flight Time: This measures the time you spend in the air during your jump. It’s closely related to jump height and helps you understand how long you can stay airborne.

Ground Contact Time: This measures how long your feet stay on the ground between jumps. Shorter ground contact times are usually better for explosive strength and power, showing that you can quickly push off the ground.

Reactive Strength Index (RSI): RSI is calculated using flight time and ground contact time. It’s a measure of explosive strength, indicating how efficiently you can switch from landing to jumping again. A higher RSI means better explosive power and overall jump performance.

By tracking these metrics over time, you can see how your training is paying off and where you might need to adjust your workouts.

Who the Skyhook Contact Mat is For

This mat is great for:

Athletes who want to jump higher.
Coaches looking for accurate data to improve training.
Sports teams that need to track and analyze player performance.
Fitness fans who want to measure and improve their jump stats.

Setting Up the Skyhook Contact Mat

Setting up the Skyhook Contact Mat is simple.

Follow the start guide to connect it to your device, and make sure it’s on a flat surface for accurate measurements.

Training Techniques Using the Skyhook Contact Mat

To get the most out of your training, try these exercises:

Jump squats
Box jumps
Plyometric drills

Use the real-time feedback to tweak your technique and get better results, and get creative with the type of exercises you track on it.

Make the mat a regular part of your training routine for the best results!

Monitoring & Analyzing Performance

Keep track of your progress with the data from the mat.

Look at your jump heights, flight times, and other metrics to see where you can improve.

Consistent monitoring helps you see long-term gains.

Tips for Maximizing Results

To get the best results, remember to:

Warm up properly before jumping.
Use the feedback to adjust your form.
Avoid common mistakes like overtraining or poor technique.

Conclusion

The Skyhook Contact Mat is a fantastic tool for anyone looking to improve their vertical jump.

It’s easy to use, provides valuable data, and can help you see real improvements.

Check out the Skyhook Contact Mat and start tracking your progress today—give us a call if you need help with it!

The Life and Legacy of Dr. Guy Voyer: A Tribute to a Sports Medicine Pioneer

Blog| ByKim Goss

The athletic fitness industry often overuses the title “pioneer.” While developing a creative way to perform dumbbell flys that target the upper-inner-deep pectorals is notable, that kind of contribution does not warrant such a title. Fleeting internet influencers aside, there are true pioneers in health and human performance who deserve recognition and our respect. One pioneer I had the opportunity to learn from is Guy Voyer, D.O., who passed away this year.

I’ve attended two of Voyer’s hands-on seminars—the first in New York and the second in Florida. The first focused on the squat exercise, while the second was a deep dive into knee function and rehabilitation. Voyer’s information in these seminars represented a paradigm shift in approaching athletic fitness training and corrective exercise. This was no surprise, as Voyer was on a different level than most sports medicine doctors with his unique ideas on physical medicine. Let me tell you why.

Voyer: The Early Years

Born in Paris, Voyer’s native language was French. He excelled in soccer, skiing, and gymnastics, and won a world championship in judo. Unfortunately, a severe eye injury restricted his future participation in sports.

Voyer studied under Dr. Ibrahim Adalbert Kapandji, the author of the classic textbook The Physiology of the Joints. Voyer’s formal academic studies led him to become a physical education teacher, physiotherapist, and osteopath—and he never stopped learning. Voyer’s continuing education studies included biomechanics, sports medicine, sports traumatology, sports biology, sports nutrition, physical medicine, massage therapy, and manual therapy. He was also involved in research projects on disk herniation and intervertebral disc compression.

Voyer Judo — Image 1. Dr. Guy Voyer “walked the talk” as an athlete, winning a world championship in judo. (SomaVoyer.com photos)

Pedagogy is the methodology of teaching, and Voyer’s interest in this field led to him earning a PhD in educational science. This educational background enabled him to design the curriculum for France’s most extensive and challenging personal training certification. At one time, approximately half of the country’s certified personal trainers completed Voyer’s program.

It would be an understatement to say that Voyer was passionate about anatomy. During a seminar at a prestigious teaching hospital in Canada, Voyer told the staff that their textbooks had omitted many essential tissues. He was then informed that a university faculty member wrote one of the anatomy textbooks. Voyer’s response? “Give me a leg!”

Voyer was escorted to the anatomy lab, accompanied by the teaching staff and students, where he dissected a limb. He showed them the missing tissues and explained their essential role in functional anatomy. To its credit, the school took immediate steps to correct the textbook errors and its teaching philosophy.

Voyer Presentation — Image 2. Voyer’s seminars were packed with an extensive review of anatomy and biomechanics. (SomaVoyer.com photo)

The Voyer Seminar Experience

Voyer’s squat seminar was an enlightening experience. Many of the trainers who attended, including me, revised their thinking on squatting technique. Here are a few of the technique variables he addressed:

Neck posture
Tension of the pharyngobasilar fascia
Position of the bar on the shoulders
Position of the hands
Amount of force of the grip
Degree of flexion of the trunk
Coordination of the thoracic diaphragm
Pelvic posture
Amplitude of flexion of the ankle, knee, and hip joints
Position of the knees

In addition to teaching optional squatting techniques for healthy individuals, Voyer showed us how to modify the exercises for those with knee, back, and hip pain. During the seminar, he provided X-rays, anatomical references, and mathematical formulas to support his methods.

Voyer believes a workout should involve more than squatting with progressively heavier weights. He said the body should be prepared for the exercise with a warm-up that fulfills three goals: cardio-respiratory heating, articular awakening, and muscular demands. To achieve all these goals, he shared with us a 13-step pre-squat warm-up (Image 3).

Squat Warmup — Image 3. The 13-Step Squat Warm-up developed by Dr. Guy Voyer. (Image courtesy “Bigger Faster Stronger” magazine)

The second seminar I attended was in Florida. There, Voyer focused on the anatomy and biomechanics of the knee and unique treatment methods for common injuries. During his introductory lecture on anatomy, Voyer presented many ideas that contrasted with what I learned in my graduate anatomy classes.

Supporting his presentation with illustrations from a French anatomy textbook, Voyer broke down the quadriceps into these six, not four, major muscle groups:

vastus intermedius
vastus medialis longus
vastus medialis obliquus
vastus lateralis
articularis genus
rectus femoris

Voyer explained that the teardrop-shaped vastus medialis has two sections, the vastus medialis longus (VML) and the vastus medialis obliquus (VMO). The VML has diagonal fibers, so it is more involved in knee extension, whereas the VMO fibers have a more horizontal alignment, which causes the knee to be pulled inward. An isolation exercise for the VMO would be to sit on a bench, stabilize your upper leg, and rotate your lower leg diagonally as if kicking a soccer ball.

Although he spoke on many topics, Voyer’s presentations always included a discussion on fascia.

Voyer Exercises — Image 4. Voyer took a hands-on approach in seminars, often participating in many exercises.(Legacyperformwell.com photos)

Everything Is Connected

Voyer described fascia as the “inner skin of the body,” connecting and shaping every muscle, organ, blood vessel, and nerve. His talent for dissection enabled him to map the fascial chains of the body to show how they influenced human movement. (For more on this topic, see the classic book Anatomy Trains: Myofascial Meridians for Manual Therapists and Movement Professionals by Thomas Myers).

Because fascia envelopes and intertwines with the muscle fibers, Voyer says it plays an essential role in determining each joint’s range of motion. If the fascia is injured, an athlete will lose power, strength, and flexibility, and their quality of movement will be adversely affected.

Voyer’s understanding of fascia led him to develop two forms of stretching. The first he called myofascial stretching, with “myo” meaning “muscle.” Myofascial stretching involves positioning the body in specific postures and contracting particular muscles to elongate these tissues.

Because fascia forms connections throughout the body, many muscles must be contracted to achieve the optimal effect. Let’s look at an example of how to stretch the fascia of the calves.

Voyer described fascia as the ‘inner skin of the body,' connecting and shaping every muscle, organ, blood vessel, and nerve. His talent for dissection enabled him to map the fascial chains to show how they influence movement. Share on X

Consider the popular calf stretch where an athlete places their hands on a wall and positions one leg behind the other, back heel down. That exercise stretches the muscles. To stretch the fascia, you must create tension on the adjacent muscles in the link to pull and lengthen the fascia. With the leg extended to feel a slight stretch, you would tighten that leg’s glutes. (Warning, if you try this, begin with a gentle contraction, about 20 percent of max effort, as you could easily cause injury.)

Another category of fascia stretching, developed by Voyer, is Longitudinal Osteoarticular Decoaptation Stretching, commonly called ELDOA from the French Étirements Longitudinaux avec Decoaptation Ostéo Articulaire.

Spinal decompression is one of the most popular forms of back pain therapy. It is performed with a special bench that secures the patients with straps while a pulley system provides general traction on the spine. Among the issues treated are bulging and herniated disks and degenerative disk disease. I’m a believer.

About 20 years ago, one of my athletes got into a serious car accident that left her bedridden for weeks with several herniated disks. She faced major (and expensive) surgery. However, spinal decompression therapy enabled her to avoid surgery, and the following year, she won a state championship in weightlifting! With that endorsement, consider that ELDOA has many of the same benefits as spinal decompression therapy that uses machines, but without the expensive hardware.

ELDOA decompresses the spine, increasing the space between each vertebra. Further, through extensive research involving X-rays, using himself as the sole test subject, Voyer showed it’s possible to increase the space between each vertebral column segmentally. This means ELDOA can be used to treat many disk issues, improve spine proprioception, and increase the hydrating of the intervertebral discs.

Voyer ELDOA — Image 5. At left, Voyer is shown teaching ELDOA exercises. At right, strength coach and posturologist Paul Gagné is shown helping Maxime Dufour-Lapointe, a freestyle skier who competed in the 2014 Olympics, with an ELDOA exercise. (Left photos by Legacyperformwell.com; right photo by Paul Gagné

You can see why many physical medicine trainers are interested in Voyer’s stretching method. Because “bones don’t have brains,” this stretching method might help a client keep a chiropractic adjustment longer.

As a bonus, Gagné says he has noticed that myofascial stretching and ELDOA has increased his athletes’ ability to recover from exercise. This effect enables athletes to increase the intensity and length of their conditioning programs and sports training sessions.

Voyer’s seminars always left the attendees teasers of numerous other cutting-edge therapy and training methods, and many would come back for additional seminars to take his extensive certificate programs. Los Angeles-based chiropractor Dr. Justin Dean attended several of Voyer’s courses and used many treatment methods in his practice. He described Voyer as “a genius” and said, “He doubled my skill set within just a few years.” Let me give you an example.

In the New York presentation, Voyer gave us a brief demonstration of osteo-articular pumping. This manual therapy treatment dramatically reduces swelling by facilitating joint fluid movement. This method contrasts with ice treatment, which has been the subject of controversy in recent years because of the theory that it can interfere with the body’s natural healing process. (For more on this topic, check out ICED!: The Illusionary Treatment Option by Gary Reinl.)

Video 1. Daniel Hellman, MSPT, is a personal trainer who co-taught with Voyer. In this video, he demonstrates osteo-articular pumping. (Video courtesy h3bydan.com)

One person with unique insight into Dr. Guy Voyer’s mind and methods is posturologist and strength coach Paul Gagné. Gagné met Voyer in 1996, attending a 40-hour Somatotherapy course with his colleague Yves Ethier. It was a challenging course as the attendees were primarily osteopaths or others with extensive knowledge of anatomy.

Because Voyer spoke a different French dialect than Gagné, it was even more difficult for him to follow the presentation. Thirty minutes into the seminar, Gagné considered quitting. Eventually, he formed a bond with Voyer, and Gagné became one of his instructors for numerous courses.

If there is one consistent theme in Dr. Guy Voyer’s body of work, it’s that he stressed the importance of understanding not just HOW a therapy or exercise works but also WHY it should work, says Kim Goss. Share on X

Gagné helped expand Voyer’s audience, convincing him to dumb down some of the material for non-therapists, and introduced Voyer to many elite athletes. I’ve had many long, enlightening conversations with Gagné about Voyer’s work and shared some of these ideas in articles. However, nothing beats an in-person seminar with an instructor trained by Voyer, and I treasure the two seminars I was able to attend with this sports medicine pioneer.

If there is one consistent theme in Dr. Guy Voyer’s body of work, it’s that he stressed the importance of understanding not just how a therapy or exercise works but also why it should work. He also believed it was important to be flexible in adapting his techniques to the individual. “It is not one size fits all,” says Voyer. “I will show you a method, but you need open eyes because you will have to apply it.”

References

Goss, Kim. “A New Look at Squatting, Part II,” November-December 2007, Bigger Faster Stronger, pp 52-55.

Dean, Justin. Facebook, drjustindean.com, June 25, 2024.

Note 1: The expression “Bones don’t have brains” appears to be attributed to holistic health practitioner Paul Chek.

Note 2: Currently, there are four schools of Dr. Guy Voyer’s teachings: ELDOA™, SomaTraining, SomaTherapy, and Manual Etiotherapy/Osteopathy. The website SomaVoyer.com offers a calendar of scheduled courses developed by Voyer. Additional resources for Voyer’s courses in the USA include Legacy Sport and Wellness Center in Dallas, Texas (Legacyperformwell.com), ELDOAUSA in Seal Beach, California (eldoausa.com), LINKPro Education in Newport Beach (linkmedicalcenter.com), and FEET-NESS in New York City, New York (feet-ness.com).

Five Considerations for Implementing Load Monitoring Systems

Blog| ByConnor Ryder

The pressure is mounting. Strength and Conditioning coaches are feeling more and more that technology is the norm, and many have had to utilize technology they don’t fully understand just to tread water. Data and metric analytics are flooding into sport across the globe to quantify athletes’ historical, current, and projected win values.

It would be hard to argue against using technology in S&C in some form or another; in fact, the rise of Sports Science as a field of study indicates that, although we don’t yet have concrete methodologies, a competitive edge through physical performance metrics is within reach. We’re seeing more records broken, greater physical outputs, and more disparity between levels. As a sports performance professional, you’d be handcuffing yourself by not using technology to drive change, audit your own performance, and gain a competitive edge for your athletes.

Simply put, technological competence is no longer a suggestion in today’s job market. With the huge disparities between resources at different levels of sport, prospective sports performance coaches should actively pursue these skills so they can rise to the top of the resume-flooded desks of potential employers. This shouldn’t come as news to anyone reading this article, but just in case you needed the revelation: any resume you submit in this field is being evaluated in direct opposition to the career personal trainer who programs 5×25 back squat for strength work, and it’s left to the intelligence of the hiring committee to discern between the two. Unfortunately, this is why we still have to deal with people like “Coach X” at “University of YZ” (you know who I’m talking about here).

As a sports performance professional, you’d be handcuffing yourself by not using technology to drive change, audit your own performance, and gain a competitive edge for your athletes, says Connor Ryder. Share on X

Lots of factors play in, of course, but skill in sport tech is likely the lowest hanging fruit in terms of separating the top 10% from the bottom 10%. This is especially true for organizations looking to move in the direction of analytics and high performance.

Early on in my career, I decided it would be more advantageous to be ahead of the curve than trying to catch up down the line. I got lucky in that several mentors of mine had deep interests in this subject matter, so I did my best to be technically literate in things like Excel, statistical analyses, and critical thinking. Although I’m still early in my career, I’ve seen the payoff within every organization I’ve been a part of. As an intern, I earned more opportunity at times simply by finding gaps in the system that could be optimized through some simple formulas. As a Graduate Assistant at Springfield College, we were able to use more complex training methods because the backend data analysis took care of itself as part of an automated system. Now, I have a strong portfolio for the future to show my skill set and gain credibility within whatever organization I join.

I learned a lot from teaching myself these skills, and one of the biggest gaps I see now with technology implementation is lack of clear, practical strategy when laying the groundwork. As we work together to push this field forward, we’ll need to be more pointed with our planning, especially with the most over-complicated and underutilized performance concept we have at our disposal: load monitoring.

Load monitoring is the most global principle in sports performance. Using load monitoring technologies, a sports performance staff can maintain physical parameters for player health while building new lines of communication with sport coaches and administration that will open new avenues in player development. This is huge! We’re talking:

Better performance
Better health
Better transparency

And, perhaps the most important aspect…better resource allocation. Data showing quantifiable value of a coach to an organization takes away the guess work from administrators who control the salaries and budgets. The wins are two-fold: admin is more comfortable with the hiring and negotiation process and performance coaches get better at their jobs (or are at least more incentivized to do so). So, when implementing load-monitoring, the system can’t be half-baked; it should be easily taught and learned, and all parties involved should frequently interacted with it.

Implementing Load Monitoring

Implementing load monitoring through technology can be daunting and overwhelming, especially when there are time constraints. Tons of athletes, not enough coaches, lack of tech literacy, and poor system automation are all barriers to entry in the field. If you don’t address these issues, frustration will rear its ugly head.

There are many ways to go about it, but here are five global considerations that worked to simplify things for me when I was given free reign over 44 GPS units for a Division 3 college football program:

1. Learn the hardware and software inside and out.

Collect a ton of data (tell the staff you are in the data collection phase). When I run into an issue, I do my best to solve it myself and jot down how I solved it. We’re talking the most basic of basic here: the GPS unit won’t turn on, the units didn’t charge overnight, data upload keeps failing, etc.

For example, a huge discussion for us prior to the start of pre-season camp one year was simply, “How do we want to go about distributing the GPS units to each player, and also make it as idiot-proof as possible?” Surprisingly, there are many different ways to go about this. We decided to whiteboard the process and determine how time-intensive each solution was. Essentially, we were diving down every rabbit hole we could imagine and working backwards from product (correct unit in vest, unit turned on, unit collecting data) to the most time-effective solution, knowing that we were working within a very tight preseason schedule that required our staff to set up and manage the entire system without physically being present when distribution took place. Ultimately, we decided on labeling units individually by name and allowing the position groups to select their vests in predetermined order, prioritizing larger athlete sizes first.

The best way to learn is to teach; by typing out the process, we were able to visualize what might happen if, for example, a brand-new intern had to take over and run our system in the event that we couldn’t, says Connor Ryder. Share on X

Once we decided on a step, I typed it into a document that could serve as an “instruction manual” for future preseasons and new interns/strength coaches. We did change the process a few times before settling on one we felt would work. The best way to learn is to teach; by typing out the process, we were able to visualize what might happen if, for example, a brand-new intern had to take over and run our system in the event that we couldn’t. This allowed us to identify all the holes and small details and to create a really effective, efficient model that accounts for all flaws while continuing to audit our own process.

2. Find things within the data you deem to be the most important physical qualities for performance.
When S&C Coaches talk about programming, general sport demands (strength, acceleration, contact volumes) inform targets. Coaches can use these targets to work backward from the start of the season and determine their annual planning for volume, intensity, density, and duration. The same is true for load monitoring. From the data we collect, we can identify what normal practice or competitive demands are. If you’re actively using your tech, you should’ve collected a ton of data so far, so identify what a normal day looks like for each athlete (Image 1).

Image 1. Screencap from a backend database of weekly Total Yardage for offensive position groups, Wednesday only. This was used to create positional averages that could be compared to game demands and each athlete’s typical loads on Wednesday practices.

This is where data management starts to come into play (see #4). Identify where you are now, and where you need to be for each competition. You, and the sport coach, might be shocked to learn the stress you’re accumulating in practices relative to the next game.

3. Create a daily, weekly, and monthly report skeleton with the metrics you think are the most important.

The three general things to monitor are volume, intensity, and density (Image 2), plus some measure of acute/chronic workload ratio.

Image 2. Screencap of summary boxes for one player during one practice, name omitted. This gave us a snapshot of what volume, intensity, and density looked like for the player for that day, which created the opportunity to adjust what that practice would look like the following day and/or week.

The way you display and communicate data is entirely up to you, and perhaps your coaching staff, if you feel they have valuable insight. Data collection over months and years will then give you the ability to relate these measures to correlations such as in-game performance and injury risk in conversations with other stakeholders.

4. Utilize a data management and storage system.

Yes, you can do this with Excel, and relatively easily, but storage becomes more difficult the more data you have. There’s an opportunity here to learn R or Python, and with OpenAI you’re only limited by availability and willingness. Learning those skills is easier said than done, but coaches have been figuring it out for years now, so the ball is in your court! Your end goal for data storage and management should be filtering data into your reporting skeleton.

This is a problem we ran into when transitioning our system, which was built in Excel, from in-season to spring ball, and one that needed to be solved pretty quickly. We didn’t want to use the same load monitoring structure as in-season, because games aren’t played at the end of each spring ball week (of course). The strength and conditioning staff knew that the data mattered, but we didn’t know exactly why it mattered to us.

The data management system we built in Excel was only meant to track practice loads and relate those loads to games. That isn’t inherently bad, since we do ultimately believe that we should be training our athletes to withstand game volumes, but we were handcuffed at the time by the system’s capabilities. I now understand that data management is best done with fully independent of variables that get filtered and sorted later on in the data analysis process.

By utilizing a system intended for large amounts of data, such as R, Python, or AMS (Athlete Management System) products like Smartabase or Kitman Labs, we can store all data and pull only what we need in the moment to answer performance questions efficiently and effectively.

5. Run your system and evaluate it thoroughly and objectively.

Try to avoid showing your system to anyone who might have preconceived notions about what immediate value they’re getting, such as the sport coach or administrator who invested in the equipment. Pick your system apart and find where you’re taking a ton of time; then, reevaluate that step.
Pick your system apart and find where you’re taking a ton of time; then, reevaluate that step. Share on X
Chances are that there’s an easier, more efficient way to make your system as autonomous as possible whilst providing as much actionable data as possible. Upon analysis, you might even find that some of the metrics you initially selected are inconsequential to performance or injury; you can’t find these things without trial and error, so use best judgment and make sure to audit yourself frequently until you feel as though your investment has paid for itself in value.

Communicating Your Results

Until you’re immensely comfortable with the weight of the amount of time you’re investing daily and the amount of return you’re getting from the data (daily and longitudinally), maintaining an eye of skepticism can be highly valuable. Eventually, you should feel as though you could explain your system to a toddler. At this point, don’t be afraid to get on the same page with your immediate staff (assistants, interns, AT), and finally meet with the sport coach to discuss what you both feel are best practices for implementation.

This theme continues down to the athletes: outline the process, show them the data, and explain their role going forward. Athletes want to stay on the field; they want to improve; and they want to compete. I think of these as the team culture application of the three innate psychological needs from Self Determination Theory (autonomy, competence, relatedness). Strength and conditioning practices that circle back on these basic needs are guaranteed successes when applied strategically. Conversely, any practice that fails to display alignment with these needs will fail for compliance reasons.

Implementing the system and enacting change is where the art of coaching comes into play; we can find infinitely creative ways to strategize. Reports, leaderboards, conversations, presentations—whatever you can think of—can all be effective. The caveat is in proactively creating a system where the product is a tool as opposed to a hindrance.

I want to make an important note here to wrap things up: although we talked mostly in terms of GPS load monitoring here, we can apply these these thinking frameworks globally. We have to wear a lot of hats in this field, and the less we’re sidelined by tunnel vision, the better off we’ll be.

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 Problem with “Instagram Coaches”: The Croc Show Featuring Scott Salwasser (Part 2)

Blog| ByElton Crochran
“Sometimes it’s messy. Messy doesn’t mean unsafe. It doesn’t mean doing things they’re not prepared for…but if everyone looks picture-perfect doing everything and they’re not straining, then it’s probably too easy. You’re either not challenging them physiologically or not challenging them skill-wise.”

Scott Salwasser, Director of Athletic Performance at Bishop Lynch High School in Dallas, Texas, joins Coach Croc to continue a short conversation about issues worth addressing in strength and conditioning. Following their previous conversation on lazy programming, here Coach Croc and Coach Sal tackle the problem of coaches programming sessions as video shoots for social media vs. focusing on the training itself.
If everyone looks picture-perfect doing everything and they’re not straining, then it’s probably too easy. You’re either not challenging them physiologically or not challenging them skill-wise, says @CoachSSal. Share on X
“What is your motivation? If it’s to highlight the kids’ effort and some outstanding performances or to make them shine, great,” Coach Salwasser explains. “But if the stuff you’re showing you just programmed for Instagram, then we got a problem.”

Coach Salwasser explains that he is largely focusing on salaried public sector coaches working with school teams and not private sector coaches who have a business to promote—and within that, he warns against assuming that coaches who are prolific with online content are the most influential in the field relative to more experienced coaches who may have a smaller online footprint.

“If (a video) looks good, it doesn’t mean your program is good,” Coach Salwasser says. “And if it looks bad, it doesn’t mean your program is bad.”

Video 1. The Croc Show featuring Coach Scott Salwasser.

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 Underappreciated Threads Connecting Team Sport Speed

Blog| ByMike Sullivan
Imagine a running back taking a handoff, bouncing around looking for a hole, and accelerating through the line. Picture a basketball player reading a play, jumping into a passing lane, and taking the ball on a fast break. Or a softball player coming into first base, realizing they have a chance for second, and turning on the speed as they go for a double. These are all common examples of displaying speed in team sport. Interestingly, they all also demonstrate some of the least commonly trained quality of speed developments: transitional and late acceleration.

However, when viewing the landscape of speed training in the team sport space, you can be inundated with the same training across the board. Within acceleration training, this means varied starts from differing positions, resisted sprints, marches, races, etc; then, within top-speed training, we see flying 10s, long buildups, wicket runs, and so on. This isn’t to say that these aren’t great tools—all of these can contribute to getting athletes faster. They should be a part of all programs. There is a common commitment towards speed development that has, rightly so, become a staple of performance training.

Outputs, however, are based on inputs.
Quality programming only comes from asking the right questions, and we only get high-level results by answering those questions effectively. This rings true when we dissect speed development in sport, says @coachmikesully1. Share on X
Asking a simple question like “How do I train to get faster?” produces a simple answer. Sprint with different resistances, run at top speed, do varied starts, etc. The answer is in everything that we already see within the team sport training setting. But the input—how do I get faster?—isn’t nuanced enough to understand the requirements of most team sports—as illustrated by the examples in the introduction. For my own training? It works. It’s an appropriate option for someone who enjoys being fast and athletic without having to meet any of the demands or requirements of complex gameplay.

But to help prepare athletes for the tasks specific to their sports, to create this high-level output, we must upgrade our inputs. So, a better question is, “What are the components of speed development that are expressed within the sport that we are training for and how is that reflected in programming and execution?” This question forces a closer look at the speed demands of sport and, therefore, leads to higher-level outputs and higher-level training.

This may seem like an unnecessary nuance within our lens of speed training, but it’s important within the context of team sports, especially since transitional and late acceleration often get omitted within training programs for these sports. These are the threads that tie together team sport speed development, yet they are qualities we do not see in training. So, as we begin to ask better questions to better inform our programming, let’s dive into what they are and why they are important.

Identifying the Phases of Acceleration

First, let’s define the phases of acceleration (stolen from Stu McMillan). Early acceleration is the first phase of sprinting, when ground contact times are longer than flight times. Transitional acceleration is the second phase, when flight times become greater than ground contacts, but occur before the athlete has reached an upright posture. Late acceleration is the third phase and is defined by an increase in speed without a change in posture (i.e., athlete’s posture has risen through the first phases and now is upright by late accel and speed continues to increase).

Now, it isn’t easy to identify where the phases turn into each other. It is obvious where early acceleration starts: the athlete is not moving and then starts moving. However, the latter stages of acceleration are more difficult to pinpoint. As athletes rise to upright, where do they end their early acceleration phase, transition through phases, and end up at top speed? Every athlete is different. Different leg lengths, different stride frequencies, different rates of rising. So, having clear and determined phases of acceleration is, admittedly, difficult. Likely, this is why transitional speed development is underappreciated. We simply cannot find it, therefore cannot measure it, and therefore cannot show our head coaches that we are improving it—which negates most reasons to work on a quality, right?

Although not directly applicable to team sport, it is always interesting to understand how the data of track and field helps to paint a clear picture for these phases. According to research (Coh & Tomazin, 2006), elite male track athletes will get through early acceleration within the first ten steps and through about fifteen meters. That eighth, ninth, or tenth step is often where the flight time of a stride overtakes the ground contact time. We also know that these same athletes take anywhere between 50-80m to get to top speed (Stoyanov, 2014). So, this means that elite track athletes are spending a minimum of 35m (38 yards) within the transitional and late acceleration phases.
Although not directly applicable to team sport, it is always interesting to understand how the data of track and field helps to paint a clear picture for these (early, transitional, and late) phases, says @coachmikesully1. Share on X
Again, we cannot directly apply these findings to team sport athletes. They are worse sprinters. But it is good to be able to set the upper limit for what a team sport athlete is likely capable of. Within team sport, it is more reasonable to say that early acceleration happens within the first 10-15 yards, transitional and late acceleration within 15-30 yards, and top speed 30-35+ yards. According to Cam Josse and work that he has looked into, NFL players (regardless of position) reach 93-96% of their top speed by the 20-yard line and all participants in the NFL Combine were around their max velocity by the time they crossed the 40-yard line. Rarely in team sport do we have athletes who are faster than the fastest athletes at the NFL Combine, but this is a good standard for most team sports.

Why Transitional Acceleration Is Crucial in Team Sports and How to Train It

Now that we have begun to figure out what transitional acceleration is, understanding why it is important is paramount. Similar to the introduction of this article, how often—when watching team sports—do athletes go from V_o(complete standstill) to V_max (top speed)?

More often, we see athletes exist within their sport at some V_submax speed and, during gameplay, a transition to V_{still submax but definitely faster}. Early acceleration is often characterized by aggressive horizontal projection angles and long ground contact times, but in team sports we don’t see those very often. We see these bursts of speed from athletes who are already fairly upright into even faster speeds. These are not early acceleration shapes. They are not top-speed velocities. They’re transitional and late acceleration qualities. Certainly, when athletes are going from V_submax to faster speeds, there is a slight horizontal lean, the shin angles drop, and the athlete accelerates, but they don’t hit the angles of early accel. Therefore, it would make sense to train this quality and phase of speed development.

Referring to earlier in this article, I mentioned the common pieces of training that we see within team sport speed already. Within the acceleration component of speed, we see—almost exclusively—10- and 15-yard sprints. As we have already covered, these sprints fall within the early acceleration phase. We need to find more comfort in stretching out some of those accelerations to 20-25 yards. Allow the athletes we are training to feel what it is like to continue accelerating through longer distances as they rise to upright. Similarly, we need to build speed while starting in more upright positions than the angles of early acceleration are known for. Different types of “drop-in” starts or timed sprints are great here. Skip-to-sprint, walk-to-sprint, and jog-to-sprint are all ways to train accelerating from a more vertical angle:

Video 1. Skip to timed sprint—higher starting position than a normal timed acceleration.

Similarly, utilizing wicket runs with a short buildup can also be effective. Something like a 5-yard or 10-yard lead into a wicket run (in this case the wickets would need to get progressively farther apart since the athlete’s stride length would be increasing) would be a great drill. Wickets are a simple drill to force more vertical orientation and doing them with a short buildup ensures that the athlete continues to accelerate while vertical:

Video 2. Wicket run with 5-yard lead in. Wickets get progressively farther apart as speed increases.

Another method of training these qualities is something that Carter Rowland brought up on our podcast, Move the Needle, when he talked about utilizing the 1080 Sprint to go from lighter to heavier resistance throughout a sprint. Variable resistance is often used in the reverse manner—heavier resistance at the start of the sprint and allowing the resistance to drop off as the athlete picks up speed—but it is interesting to think about it in the opposite context.

Carter’s rationale within the episode was that oftentimes in football, athletes will go from a certain speed to a physical impact. Being able to accelerate through that impact—which inevitably causes some kind of deceleration—is a critical component of football and many other sports. Think of a soccer player battling through contact to dribble a ball or a basketball player driving through contact toward the rim. This is also a similar concept to what we have talked about in this article so far. As you sprint through the light resistance, you begin to rise out of the early acceleration stages and approach vertical, only to meet more resistance, needing to lower your angle back down slightly and actively accelerate through that newfound resistance:

Video 3. Variable resistance, starting at 2kg and increasing to 12kg as speed increases. Hard to see on video but the feeling of added resistance as speed increases results in another acceleration.

Certainly, there are more ways to train these phases. However, the first two examples of the drop-in starts and the short lead in wicket runs are easily added or managed within existing frameworks. The third (the example on the 1080) is unique and requires a high level of technology but certainly trains the same qualities we are chasing here.

Careful Addition Requires Thoughtful Subtraction

Adding something to a program, inevitably, means you have to remove something. As I said at the beginning of this article, so many of the things we already do within the speed space need to stay. The early acceleration and the maximum velocity work are essential for creating a well-rounded and resilient athlete. However, it would benefit us, as coaches, to be more diligent about understanding the speed demands of the sports we are training. Doing so would lead us to the same place: the need to add transitional and late acceleration work.
Good coaches are always trying to maximize their time with their programs. I have been able to incorporate these concepts into my speed training with the teams that I work with in a handful of simple ways, says @coachmikesully1. Share on X
As we begin to wrap-up, three important notes need to be made about this article.

I wrote this in generalities. Do all athletes fall into these same yardages of acceleration and top-speed phases? Of course not. Male and female, individual anthropometrics, previous training, injury history, etc. all play a role in where specific athletes may fall. I do think the yard ranges that I set out cover many team sport athletes but, of course, context is always situationally dependent.

I talked about how speed in the current realm of performance training includes mostly early acceleration and top speed. However, in practice, I believe that many coaches implementing what they believe or program as “top speed” are actually training transitional and late acceleration. I have seen many coaches implement “top speed” training by having their athletes run a “flying 10” with a 10-yard lead (20-yard total). As outlined earlier, this is not top-speed training. For some athletes, this may be getting close; but for most, it is not long enough. So, while more coaches than I may credit or train these phases, I don’t think many do intentionally, which is just as erroneous as not doing it at all.

Finally, my thoughts are never my own. Instead, they are the thoughts of others boiled down and mixed into my own process. Thank you to Stu McMillan, Carter Rowland, Cam Josse, and many others for lending their thought process to my own. I would not have landed here without your help.

To close, I am not lobbying for this transitional and late acceleration training to become the majority of speed work; I am just saying that it needs to be included. It is difficult to effectively fit every quality of sport into a limited training block.

Good coaches are always trying to maximize their time with their programs. I have been able to incorporate these concepts into my speed training with the teams that I work with in a handful of simple ways. If we are doing max velocity work and it is a wicket day, our first two reps may be from a close distance (5 or 10 yards) before backing out for a longer lead in. If we are testing short acceleration times, we will finish with one or two reps of some transitional start into a timed sprint (skip-to-sprint, walk/jog-to-sprint). Even within our warmups, instead of finishing with a 10- or 15-yard acceleration, we’ll stretch those out to 20-25 yards. Small changes to programming can make a big difference in performance. Finding ways to implement a more complete speed training program for your team can make a huge difference on game day.

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

Coh, M., & Tomazin, K. (2006). Kinematic analysis of the sprint start and acceleration from the blocks. New Studies in Athletics, 21(3), 23-33.

Stoyanov, H. (2014). Competition model characteristics of elite male sprinters. New Studies in Athletics, 29(4), 53-60.

Takeaways From NFL Combine Training and Force Plate Testing: What Has the Highest Correlation to Sprinting and Jumping

Blog| BySteve Haggerty
The 40-yard dash is the main event of the NFL Scouting Combine. This test serves as a critical measure of a football player’s speed and explosiveness. This assessment, more than any other individual testing metric at The Combine, influences a player’s draft stock—and, therefore, the amount of money on their rookie contract.

This past January and February, I was at Bommarito Performance Systems with Pete Bommarito (where I have been for the past five NFL Combine training seasons), working with football players getting ready for the NFL Combine and their college pro days. On a quest to continue to improve training methods, we used force plate testing to determine what qualities have the highest correlation to speed and vertical jump performance. I am sure that most of you are familiar with force plates, but these are an incredible tool to assess the strengths and weaknesses of individual athletes. There are countless research articles that support the use of force plate testing to collect valid and reliable data.

In my understanding of sprinting and jumping, athletes need to produce high levels of relative force in a short amount of time and in the proper direction. Although the force plates we used can distinguish total force and vertical force, both tests were very vertical in nature (reactive strength index and isometric mid-thigh pull), so I did not expect the direction of force to give us high correlations. I was expecting peak relative force output and the speed of the force output to be our biggest predictors of sprinting and vertical jumping performance.
Impulse looks to be highly correlated with vertical jump, acceleration, and top speed. But with these tests, the higher the impulse, the worse their performance... This has been a tough one to understand, says @Steve20Haggerty. Share on X
Methods

We tested 32 male college football athletes preparing for the NFL Combine and college pro days. Using the Vald ForceDecks Max we tested reactive strength index (RSI) via the “Hop Test,” as well as the isometric mid-thigh pull (IMTP). The RSI test consisted of four consecutive jumps where the players were instructed to jump as high as they can and as quickly as they can.

For the IMTP test, we did not use a barbell like the standard version of this test because I wanted to implement this test in a way that minimized stress on the low back. We used a chain looped around their waist and the bottom of the squat rack, which acted as an unmovable object due to its weight. This setup allowed the players to reach high force outputs without much involvement of the low back. The IMTP test lasted five seconds, with players pushing as hard as they could and as fast as they could.

Players’ bodyweight and body fat percentage were also measured regularly through the use of a bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA).

The players were all tested on their vertical jump using a Vertec and they regularly tested their sprint times using the Vald SmartSpeed timing gates. Their best vertical jump test, 10-20 yard split, and 20-40 yard splits were used for statistical analysis.

Video 1. RSU testing on the Vald ForceDecks Max.

Figure 1. Picture of the IMTP, with a chain looped around the athlete’s back and the squat rack. A belt squat belt was used to pad the back from the chain.

Statistics Simplified

Using Microsoft Excel, each of the unique data points collected from the force plates were run in a correlation coefficient with the acceleration and max velocity sprint times, and vertical jump test results. Along with determining correlations, the R²was determined for each of the correlations. As a stats refresher, R²represents the variance of the dependent variable that is explained by the independent variable. The larger R²is, the more of the dependent variable that can be explained by the independent variable. This should make more sense in the tables below.

Results

The tables below list the force plate and body composition testing, with the highest correlation to the performance tests. The highlighted tests in green were taken during the IMTP, while the remaining tests with a normal white background were taken during the RSI test or body composition testing.

Discussion

What Is Not Important

Impulse looks to be highly correlated with vertical jump, acceleration, and top speed. But with all of these performance assessments, the higher the impulse, the worse their performance in the testing measures. This has been a tough one to understand. Sprinting and jumping require large amounts of force in a limited amount of time. Impulse is the measure of force throughout the duration of time it is applied. One would think that the higher the impulse, the better. Well, in this data set, impulse is highly correlated to body mass (R = .881), and as I mentioned earlier, these testing performances depend on relative strength and force. So, maybe if we convert impulse into relative terms it will have a more appropriate relationship to jumping and sprinting? When doing so, the relationship between acceleration and relative impulse became very poor (R = .145), and even worse with top speed and vertical jump.

Impulse was taken from the repeated hop test, so what about peak vertical force from the IMTP? This is another good measure of strength in both absolute and relative terms. For both acceleration and top speed, these measures were positively correlated with speed, meaning the higher the peak vertical force, the worse the sprinting speed. Again, converting this into relative terms weakened the relationship. But unlike with impulse, at least the relationship became negative (R = -.257), meaning the higher the relative peak vertical force, the faster the sprint speed.

Power is a popular term in the strength and conditioning world. All of us coaches want to make our athletes more powerful. Power in the colloquial sense and power in terms of physics take on slightly different meanings. As you can see on the tables above, for both acceleration and max velocity, peak power was 15^th on the list of correlations. Again, taking body weight into consideration and converting peak power into relative terms changes the correlations from positive to negative (the higher the relative peak power, the faster the sprint), but it would still remain 15^th on each list. For vertical jump, relative peak power is much higher on the list, but carries about the same correlation as it does with acceleration and max velocity.

What Is Important

The two variables that were most highly correlated with acceleration, top speed, and vertical jump performance were body mass and body fat percentage. It should come as no surprise that these two variables are at the top, as the performance of all three of these outputs are highly dependent on mass-specific forces. Bodyweight accounts for 80% of the variance in acceleration speed, and you will always see this trend in NFL Combine 40-yard dash data—the lighter athletes run faster. Out of 22 players to ever run a sub 4.3 40-yard dash at the NFL Combine, only three of them weighed over 200 pounds and in total the group has an average weight of 185.8 pounds.

Figure 2. There is a very strong relationship between body mass and sprinting speed. Lighter athletes typically run faster.

The length of time to exert force in sprinting (ground contact time) and the vertical jump are relatively different. The average ground contact time during a sprint decreases as the athlete reaches higher velocities. The length of time to produce force in a vertical jump obviously can vary between athletes, but on average is .45 seconds. The time to produce force while sprinting at top speed is very short (about .1 second), during acceleration is fairly short (around .2 seconds), and is relatively long during a vertical jump (.45 seconds). The force plate testing results reflected this.

The relative force expressed at 100 milliseconds (.1 seconds) is ranked higher on the list for vertical jump than it is for acceleration or top speed. Force and impulse at 50 milliseconds are more related to top speed than either vertical jump or acceleration. The speed at which the athletes produce force is important to how well they performed at running and jumping.

Figure 3. The trendline illustrates that, typically, the more relative force produced at 100ms the higher the vertical jump.

RSI and ground contact time (GCT) both had high correlations to acceleration and top speed, while only RSI made the top 15 for vertical jump. Again, sprinting has more of a time constraint on producing force than the vertical jump, so this makes sense. This further highlights the importance of producing force very quickly in order to run fast.

Figure 4. This graph illustrates the relationship between RSI and sprinting speed in the 10-20 yard split. On average, the better the RSI, the faster the sprint time.

What To Do With This?

Bodyweight

We do know that having a lower bodyweight will improve these performances, but to play football, certain positions require a certain amount of mass. We also see body fat percentage plays an important role, and that would be a better metric to change. The leaner an athlete is, the better they will perform on these tests compared to people of similar weight with less muscle mass. Okay, so maintain a good body fat percentage. For some rough guidelines for body composition for each position group, a study by Dengel et al. (2013) used DXA scans on football players leading up to the NFL draft and summer camp. They found the average body fat percentage for each individual position group (See below: Note that DXA and BIA are both valid methods for measuring body composition, but they are not the same test.

(Data from the Dengel et al. 2013 study mentioned above.)

Knowing the strong correlation between body composition and both sprinting and jumping performance in NFL Combine tests, it is important for the athletes to achieve a better than average body composition for their position group. In terms of training implications for those athletes falling at below their position group average, some extra strength training volume could be utilized early on in the training process. Body composition would typically not be the main focus of training because:

Training to perform well on the test is more of the focus.

The amount of strength and sprint training they are doing should already be beneficial for healthy body composition.

Adding in excess cardiovascular work in the attempt to lose body fat would potentially take away from their performance in the tests.

If major body composition changes are a priority for specific athletes, I think the majority of those changes will come from proper diet and supplementation followed by the potential for more strength training volume.
We know that a lower bodyweight will improve performance, but certain football positions require a certain amount of mass. We also see body fat percentage plays an important role, and that would be a better metric to change. Share on X
Produce Force Fast

Contact time, RSI, and time specific force measures all contributed to sprinting and jumping performance. The shorter the time to apply force in a performance (1. Max velocity 2. Acceleration 3. Vertical jump), the more these variables were related to the performance. RSI has the highest correlation to max velocity, then acceleration, and then vertical jump. We see this same relationship occur with contact time and time specific force measures. Note that RSI is moderately correlated to vertical jump, but RSI uses the jump height in its equation. When just utilizing contact time in the correlation to vertical jump performance, the relationship is weaker (R = -.340). So, producing force quickly is important for all three performance tests, and is more important the faster the force express is in the performance test.

Power training in the weight room in the form of Olympic lifts, weighted jumps, and speed squats should all be a staple in this training process. Overspeed methods on the field and in the weight room such as assisted plyometrics (continuous vertical jumps, bounds, and single leg bounds) as well as assisted sprints are something that we have utilized over the past few years during this training period. I plan on using these methods even more in the future along with assisted pogo jumps, with the goal being to expose the body to faster ground contact times than it could typically produce on its own.

Proper strength training of the gastroc, soleus, and methods for Achilles tendon health (slow eccentrics and long duration isometrics) have been a part of our NFL Combine training and should be emphasized even more in the future. Using overcoming isometrics in running and jumping specific joint angles is a method I plan to use in the future. The goal should be to produce as much force as possible as quickly as possible. This would be specific to running and jumping in terms of joint angles and speed of force production, but with sprinting the muscle contraction type during ground contact is isometric just like this training method.

Even though I am a fan of tempo or time under tension training methods for certain goals, these methods do not best improve the qualities we would want to improve during this time. Unless doing these for tendon health in a smaller movement, like calf raises, I would stay away from tempo training. We know these practices can be useful, but not typically for rate of force production.

Figure 5. This graph shows the relationship between ground contact time and 20-40 yard sprint times. There is a clear outlier of an athlete over 600ms for their best GCT, around 200ms more than anyone else. This athlete was dealing with an ankle injury from his football season that limited him so much that he did not run or jump at the NFL Combine.

Figure 6. This is the same graph as above, but with the outlier athlete removed from the data. The R² indicates an even stronger relationship between GCTs and max velocity sprinting speed.

Produce High Relative Forces?

The data collected suggests that peak force and impulse measured on the force plate via RSI and IMTP testing tell us very little about the athlete’s sprint speed and vertical jump performance. That was a tough pill to swallow. We know that there are very large forces relative to bodyweight produced when sprinting, and the faster the athlete the higher these relative forces typically are. Maybe a hip extension isometric test (Run Specific Isometrics from Alex Natera) would provide a better relationship? Sticking with Natera’s concepts, maybe doing the IMTP while on the ball of the foot would provide a better relationship? For now, peak force and impulse do not provide a correlation in the manner we would expect.

Being able to produce high peak forces is still a quality that we would want to see in football players, especially in linemen who need to produce high forces in a game as they try to physically move their opponents. Overall, football is a very physical game, so being strong and being able to produce a lot of force will always be important for most position groups.

Conclusion

The data suggests that bodyweight, body fat percentage, and the speed of force application would be the categories with the highest correlations to sprinting speed and vertical jump performance. Peak vertical force and impulse do not have the relationship with these performances as I originally predicted. Training for the 40-yard dash and vertical jump should spend time attempting to improve an athlete’s body composition and the speed at which they can produce force.
Peak vertical force and impulse do not have the relationship with sprinting speed and vertical jump performances as I originally predicted, says @Steve20Haggerty. Share on X
In the future, I would like to see how this type of force plate testing could lead to more individualized training programs. Understanding where an athlete is below average compared to their position group, players of similar size, or compared to their NFL Combine testing goals could help us coaches determine how to properly train them. This could help us more easily and confidently determine what their limiting factors are, and how to train to improve them.

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 Power In Sport?

Blog| ByEric Richter
Sports are a high-stakes world where milliseconds and millimeters can make the difference between victory and defeat, and power is a key component in the recipe for success.

But exactly what is power in sport? And how do we actually develop it effectively?

Let’s dive into this whole concept of power in sport, discussing why it’s important, how to train for it, and check out how velocity-based training (VBT) and devices like the Enode Sensor can be game-changers in building this game-winning skill.

What Is Power In Sport?

Power in sport is more than just brute strength—but power and strength are strongly connected!

Power is the ability to exert maximum force in the shortest amount of time.

This combination of strength and speed is highly important in many sports, from track and field to team sports like football and basketball.

Power enables athletes to perform explosive movements like sprinting, jumping, and throwing with better efficiency and effectiveness—and every edge over competition is something we take!

Power Definition In Sport

Power is mathematically expressed as:

Power = [(Force x Distance) ÷ Time]

This equation highlights how important both force and velocity are in generating power…

An athlete’s ability to produce power is not only dependent on their strength, but also on their ability to move quickly.

So, training programs that focus on developing both these aspects are a must for optimizing athletic performance.

Power in Physical Fitness

Power plays a big role in physical fitness and overall athletic performance.

It’s a key factor in many physical activities, including:

Sprinting: The ability to accelerate quickly and maintain high speeds.

Jumping: Key for sports like basketball, volleyball, and track and field events.

Throwing: Important for sports such as baseball, javelin, and shot put.

Agility: Improves your ability to make quick changes in direction, important for sports like soccer and tennis.

Incorporating power training into workout programs helps athletes improve almost all types of strength, but especially their explosive strength, leading to better performance and reduced risk of injury since they’re more equipped to handle greater forces.

It’s all about being intentional with your training goals.

Building Power with Velocity-Based Training

Velocity-based training (VBT) is an approach that focuses on the speed of movement rather than the amount of weight lifted to determine the most optimal working weights.

By monitoring the velocity of each rep, athletes and coaches can tailor their training programs to optimize power development.

Here are a couple more velocity-based training pros:

Immediate Feedback: Provides real-time feedback on performance, allowing for immediate adjustments.

Intentional Training: Ensures that athletes train at the optimal intensity for power development.

Customization: Allows for individualized training programs based on an athlete’s specific needs and capabilities on a daily basis (e.g. if they are highly fatigued for a training session).

VBT Devices for Power

One of my favorite tools for implementing VBT for power is the Enode Sensor.

It measures the velocity of each movement, providing immediate, accurate, and actionable data to optimize training.

The Enode Sensor has several features that make it great for power training:

Real-Time Feedback: Delivers instant data on movement velocity so that athletes can make immediate adjustments.

Detailed Data: Tracks several metrics, including peak velocity, average velocity, and power output.

Convenient: Small, lightweight, and durable for every training session. Plus, it comes with a carry case that you can toss into your gym bag.

The Enode Sensor gives coaches and athletes valuable insight into performance, which allows us to make data-driven decisions for our power training.

Conclusion

Power is a fundamental aspect of athletic performance, influencing everything from sprinting speed to jumping height.

At SimpliFaster, we are dedicated to providing the best tools and resources to help athletes and coaches increase power and achieve their performance goals.

Explore our range of products and educational resources to take your training to the next level!

FAQs

Why is power important in football?

Power is important in football because it combines strength and speed to execute quick, explosive movements. These movements are required for things like sprinting, tackling, and jumping. Power enables players to accelerate rapidly, change direction quickly, and exert maximum force in the shortest time possible.

What is the definition of power?

Power is the ability to exert maximum force in the shortest amount of time. It’s a combination of strength and speed, allowing an athlete to perform explosive movements efficiently.

What sport is an example of power?

Track and field events, particularly the 100-meter sprint and shot put, are great examples of sports that require a high degree of power. These events demand quick, explosive bursts of energy and maximum force application in a very short timeframe.

What does power mean in exercise?

In exercise, power refers to the capacity to generate maximum force rapidly. This involves performing movements that require both strength and speed, such as plyometrics, Olympic lifts, and sprinting. Developing power is a must for improving overall athletic performance and enhancing specific sport-related skills.

What’s the difference between strength and power?

Strength is the ability to exert force against resistance, whereas power is the ability to exert that force quickly. Strength involves sustained effort over a period of time, while power focuses on the speed of force application. For example, lifting a weight slowly demonstrates strength, while lifting a weight quickly demonstrates power.

What are examples of power in physical fitness?

Examples of power exercises include plyometric drills such as box jumps, medicine ball throws, and clap push-ups. Olympic weightlifting movements like the clean and jerk or snatch also require power. These exercises are designed to improve the body’s ability to exert force quickly.

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

Changing with the Game: Lessons in Opportunity Cost for Multisport Athletes

Blog| ByNathan Huffstutter
The speech I’d prepared was equal parts rah-rah and duty to warn, but standing in front of 15 hungry, multisport soccer players on a misty, May-Gray evening I knew I’d have to crank through an abridged version to keep them sitting still. When the kids start pulling their sweatshirts down over their knees? The clock’s ticking.

And by hungry, I mean literally—we had just blitzed through a fast-paced workout and, as the girls sat to discuss our season outline, team goals, and the culture and training environment we wanted to maintain as they enter their freshman and sophomore years of high school, they had pizza, watermelon, and our right back’s famous homemade brookies waiting on a buffet table.

But hungry also in the sense of ambition. Collectively, the team had achieved their goal of earning qualification into a promotion- and relegation-based regional league for the coming 2024 fall season. At the same time, individually, the players are transitioning into the phase where they now want game film and advice on how to create highlight clips; they’re setting up scouting and social media profiles; they have ID camps and showcases on their calendars. In addition to college considerations and wanting to stay on track for roster spots down the road on very competitive high school varsity soccer teams, over ¾ of the players also intend to play at least one if not two other varsity sports.

Image 1. 20 teams qualified. 19 traditional year-round teams, one multisport team (DMCV Sharks G09 Flex).

Over the previous four years, this group of players have been able to develop one scarce asset (all-around athleticism) that serves them well. Over the next 3-4 years, the question becomes how well they manage another pair of other assets which—while boundless back in elementary school—have a diminishing availability with each passing year: time and energy.
The players have been able to develop one scarce asset (all-around athleticism)—over the next 3-4 years, the question becomes how well they manage a pair of other assets which will have a diminishing availability: time and energy. Share on X
Opportunity Cost in Youth and High School Sports

“Wow, your girls are REALLY athletic.” If I had a dime for every coach, parent, or opposing player who has said that about my teams, I’d have a stronger Vanguard portfolio. And if I had a dime for every coach or club who has tried to follow a similar multisport model to develop high school athletes…I’d have a tip the Starbucks barista would bombastically side-eye. As this G09/G10 team heads into it’s fifth year, following the three-year span of the inaugural G05/G06 Flex team, they remain a unicorn team within our club and in the region, with a roster made up of girls who also play softball, flag football, lacrosse, volleyball, beach volleyball, field hockey, and run track.

There’s a chicken/egg rabbit hole you *could* go down: do they play multiple sports because they’re very athletic or does their athleticism come from years of playing multiple sports? The answer, though, is simply yes. And more important than debating “which came first” is appreciating the outcome: here’s a group of enthusiastic, super-athletic teenage girls still successfully playing several sports at an age when the attrition rates for players in any one sport are alarmingly high.
Do they play multiple sports because they’re very athletic or does their athleticism come from years of playing multiple sports? The answer, though, is simply yes, says @CoachsVision. Share on X
In our player meeting, to keep the girls from making a mad dash for the brookies the moment I paused, I used a Socratic method where I’d sent infographics to their team group chat and had them all break out their phones while I asked leading questions:

What were some of the keys to our collective success the prior year?

What are a few of the qualities and definitions of a good teammate?

What makes the training environment a place you want to come to week after week?

Also, read aloud the quote on slide number three and tell me what that means to you…

Image 2. Our team goal setting activities from the prior two years—I keep their goals from year-to-year to hold them accountable. The quote comes from Bill Parcells via Joey Guarascio and is one I repeat to my players. The concept can be one of the harder things for players who’ve always been top tier athletes to wrap their heads around… what they’ve regularly done to be successful may work up until the landscape changes. And then, it doesn’t.

The players answered each question thoughtfully and in their own words—it’s always gratifying to hear that the concepts and foundations that make up our value system have sunk in to the extent where they aren’t simply regurgitated, but woven into an articulate, personal spin. But then I also threw out a final, unfamiliar question: who can tell me a definition of the phrase “opportunity cost”?

Blank stares. Sweatshirts pulled down to shoetops.

At first glance, opportunity cost is the most simple and intuitive concept imaginable—with any decision you make, the upsides of that choice are counterbalanced by the cost of losing out on the best alternatives that your decision then prevents you from doing. It’s also a highly challenging concept to apply—a true assessment of opportunity cost requires projecting yourself into an unknown future and weighing consequences which are colored by cognitive biases, shifting priorities, knowledge gaps, good/bad personal habits, and the outcome of other people’s actions and decisions that you do not control among countless other factors.

In terms of long-term athletic development, the players on my team had deliberately chosen not to play on more standard, specialized “elite” youth soccer teams…and to this point, the opportunity cost of that was minimal: no “ECNL” letters on the sleeves of their jersey or in their IG profiles, but they were still able to play at a competitive, regional club level and had not had to sacrifice other sports and activities to do so.

Here, though, over the coming years is where things do get challenging.

Image 3. “Some point in HS” is vague and not because of Twitter’s character limit—if and when that point comes, it will be different for every athlete due to a range of different factors, some of which they will have some degree of control over and some of which they will not.

Post PHV, for female athletes the developmental pyramid narrows and the player pool in primary sports gets reduced to those who are also physically talented, technically-skilled, tactically-sound, and mentally driven—and, beyond that, largely those who have been banking years of sweat equity in those sports with highly-competitive, year-round club/travel teams. Although I champion multisport participation and do everything I can to support athletes who want to play as many sports as possible…realistically, in that aforementioned duty to warn role, I also have a responsibility to help them reach their goals and honestly communicate that during the course of that pursuit, they may hit a crossroads where juggling too many sports and teams can be a limiting factor.

Even more challenging? That point will differ by athlete, differ by sport, differ by the schools they attend, differ by coaches within those sports and schools, and differ by the extent to which achieving specific athletic goals even matters to them in the first place.

Changing with the Game: From “Play Everything” to “Be Purposeful”

My older daughter recently graduated as a two-sport varsity athlete from Torrey Pines, a San Diego public high school which, year-after-year, tends to be ranked among the top handful of “sports schools” in California, just behind endowment-flush private schools like Mater Dei, Cathedral Catholic, and St. John Bosco.

In a senior graduating class of ~750, the best female athlete at Torrey Pines was the first female or male athlete in the 64-year history of CIF (California Interscholastic Federation) San Diego to be the CIF Player of the year in three sports: Laurel Gonzalez was the quarterback of the varsity flag football team (CIF Finalists), the striker and primary goal-scorer on their CIF-winning soccer team, and will go on to play lacrosse at Johns Hopkins next year.

Her opportunity cost for playing three varsity sports? None that was apparent on the field.

For my daughter, however, who was always a very good athlete but never that top-half-a-percentile beast of an athlete, there was a definable point heading into her junior year where she could have improved her standing in the team hierarchy within either Torrey’s soccer or softball programs by going all-in and pursuing just one of the two sports on a dedicated, year-round basis (or, alternately, by transferring to a school where she could be a bigger fish in a smaller pond—there are always multiple pathways).

But, for a range of academic and quality-of-life reasons, she made a conscious choice that being a role player for two varsity sports and being able to transition between those two primary activities (plus enjoying her club/travel teams for both sports) was worthwhile enough that it outweighed the opportunity cost: losing that increased training time and focused energy to push for a more prominent role on the varsity team for either sport.

Image 4. Then & Now: Progressing from the “Play Everything” sports-sampling phase as a 10-year-old #4 to the “Be Purposeful” phase of managing the demands of two high school varsity sports as #22.

One of the hardest realities for multisport athletes to adapt to is how the consequences and calculus of being a multisport athlete can change…and, oftentimes, without them recognizing that change until it’s already passed them by. Up until the age of 14-15, the primary challenges for multisport athletes are on the administrative side: managing the demanding schedules, high costs, extensive travel, and conflicting activities in a youth sports environment dominated by year-round, specialization-based club/travel sports.
One of the hardest realities for multisport athletes to adapt to is how the consequences and calculus of being a multisport athlete can change—oftentimes, without them recognizing that change until it’s already passed them by. Share on X
Given those administrative challenges, the primary consequences also tend to be administrative and in form of a coach-imposed punishments—if you miss practices or games for my sport while playing another, I will reduce the playing time that you would otherwise merit on the basis of ability and performance in order to send a disciplinary message and compel you not to miss my games.

At some point, however, that coach-imposed punishment can shift to a sport-imposed one—a coach doesn’t have to “bench” a player for missing team activities if, as an outcome of constantly missing team activities and the corresponding developmental benefits, that player fails to progress and allows others to pass them by in the performance-based team hierarchy.

In a competitive environment, to remain the same is to regress.

Being a multisport athlete is awesome; it is not easy. On the soccer pitch, coaches frequently repeat the phrase “check your shoulders,” which specifically reminds players to see opponent’s movements in their blind spots and generally reinforces the idea of having total awareness of the field of play.

Multisport athletes do not need to do the exact same things their specialized peers/opponents are doing—but, they do need to regularly check their shoulders and ask: “how am I going to continue getting better in all of my sports at the same rate as those peers and teammates who are locked in on getting better month after month?” As many doors as I have seen opened for multisport athletes through their overall competitive abilities, I have also seen doors close too early for players who did not have a purposeful plan to continue improving across multiple sports and did not appreciate the opportunity cost of their choices.

To stay competitive and keep progressing across a four-year high school career (and beyond), three key questions every multisport high school athlete should ask are:

1. For the sports I want to play, how compatible are the high school seasons and the club/travel seasons?

Math is fair: 1+1=2. Life and sports are not always fair, and 1+1 does not always equal the same 2 when pairing sports.

Here in San Diego, a reasonable number of ECNL, GA, and ECRL soccer players also compete in speed and power events for their high school track teams in the spring; there are, however, comparatively few elite/varsity soccer players who compete for their cross-country teams in the fall. To some extent, that has roots in fundamental athletic make-up: endurance is a useful supporting quality for soccer but not a game-changing one, whereas dominant players impact the shape of the game with speed, power, coordination, timing, and explosiveness.

More than relative athletic qualities, though, for soccer players the opportunity costs of a cross-country season and that of a track season are entirely different. The fall cross country season is time-consuming and fatigue-inducing, with a weekly load of training and meets from August through November that leave precious little time or energy to participate in a fall club soccer season.

August through November, however, is the most crucial stretch for most club soccer teams, encompassing late summer tournament/showcase play, the fall league season, and the year’s longest sustained run of consistent weekly training—this is the stretch of time where good soccer players get better at playing soccer. Missing all or most of that stretch is…a costly regression.

Spring track and field? Soccer players will have already set their foundation for the playing year by competing through their fall club season and then playing the full high school soccer season—outside of those teams competing for playoff spots in elite leagues, even at the more ambitious levels of club soccer the spring season tends to be less demanding and more accommodating than the fall. Beyond that, the track events most soccer players gravitate toward are less globally fatiguing than the weekly mileage demands of cross country.

The opportunity cost of a high school track season for soccer players? Reasonably low, provided good communication exits between the athletes and coaches involved.

For soccer players in Southern California, the same situation is also true of fall field hockey vs. spring lacrosse. It’s not in any way “fair” that a high school field hockey season is far more disruptive and attaches a higher opportunity cost than a spring lacrosse season…but the reality is that a female soccer/lacrosse player has a far smoother developmental path through high school than a female soccer/field hockey player.

Be purposeful: Some version of this scheduling calculus will play out for any multisport athlete in factoring the peak and prime seasons for high school and club sports.

2. What are the energy demands of the sports I want to play and are there secondary athletic benefits from participating?

Why are softball and baseball good options for multisport athletes? Unless you are pitching or catching, the sports are not physically draining. Time-consuming? Sure. Mentally challenging? Absolutely. Expensive? How much you got? Yep, they’ll take it. But in terms of recovery, a player who played 4-5 games in left field or at second base over the weekend is not physically wrecked come Monday morning. This past spring, my daughter could drive straight from an afterschool varsity softball game to an evening training with her ECRL soccer team and hit the ground running…which she never could have done had she instead been competing in, say, the school’s spring gymnastics season.

Better yet, for soccer players who log A LOT of minutes for their club and/or high school teams, spending a couple months out on the outfield grass and chilling in the dugout is a great deload from all the sprints, decels, collisions, and non-stop pounding on the turf.

Why might softball/baseball be less valuable for multisport athletes?

After the general movement literacy, sports IQ, and spatial awareness learned by playing for years at the youth level, for older teens, practicing and playing softball and baseball don’t improve a whole lot outside of specific skill in those sports (unlike, say, the obvious transfer of jumping ability from volleyball to basketball). If an athlete needs to improve speed, power, coordination, or technical skill to remain competitive in another sport, a high school season out on the diamond comes at the expense of time to develop those needed qualities.

The next half of that question is also program specific. Do the sport coaches simply take the best players available and write them into the lineup for whirlwind 10-week season or does the program have a method and system for developing athletes over the course of time? A few months ago, one of my longtime softball co-coaches sent me a video of her son, a freshman at Torrey Pines, banging a high outside pitch for a home run on a partial swing where he didn’t come close to full extension. That clip came with a note that the baseball coach had sent thank you messages to the school’s football coaches for that bomb—the ability to muscle that pitch over the fence was largely due to her son being part of the football team’s comprehensive, year-round lifting program.

3. What are the participation rates and player pathways for the sports I want to play?

This is the most challenging question for a couple reasons:

The answers vary widely by school and by sport and unless a player has older siblings…information can be lacking to help athletes choose the right path and for parents to help support those decisions. Some schools are field hockey powerhouses where competent players will struggle to make the varsity team and at other schools it can be a sport where any kid who wants to play, can. At some schools it’s harder to make the varsity lacrosse team than the varsity soccer team, and vice-versa.

There’s a pragmatic side to looking at a sport by participation rates, but success in sport over time depends on passion, not pragmatism. You can look at participation rates and decide there’s a more clear path to play 4 years of high school water polo than soccer…but like all sports, water polo is hard and if you quit because you don’t love early mornings in the pool, you would have been better off battling it out for a spot on the soccer pitch or finding less competitive versions of soccer to keep active in the sport.

Are the sports you want to play cut or no-cut? If they are cut sports, are a large number of freshmen cut from the programs? In which case, the 3-4 months prior to the tryouts for that sport are absolutely critical to be in top form, because MJ-legend aside…nowadays, players cut from their high school teams as freshmen rarely try out again as sophomores. More often, they give up on both the school and club version of that sport because it feels like the end of the line.

Is the program vertically integrated with a developmental system in place, or are there large roster Freshman/Novice and Junior Varsity teams of players who are essentially on a separate track from the Varsity team? This is a particularly dodgy one—you want to celebrate and support players making ANY school team, it’s exciting and an important part of the high school experience. And this will again differ hugely by school and by sport. But the reality is that while there may be an avenue for athletes to play for their first couple years of high school, those players may not be on a course to play legit minutes for (or even make) their varsity teams—and, beyond that, may not even be fully aware that they are not on course to play legit minutes for their varsity teams. In which case goal-oriented players need to find a way to get onto that track sooner rather than later.

How You Get Better Is Different for Everyone, But Everyone Needs a Plan to Get Better

The duty to warn part of my speech was shorter than the rah-rah portion, largely because we were there to build enthusiasm for the coming year and not throw cold water on it; but, also, because our role as coaches is to provide our athletes the tools to make better choices, not to make choices for them.

Be purposeful.

That means having a priority system, calculating opportunity costs, and when those costs come due, being willing to pay those costs with eyes wide open. Speaking to my soccer team, I passed along a few of the recurring mistakes I’ve seen over the past decade:

Prioritizing whichever sport has the coach with the harshest discipline – Although not uncommon, this is the opposite of calculating true opportunity costs and is just a flinch reaction to an abusive hard cost. I once had a soccer player with an ‘old-school’ travel softball coach who broke his players down, berated them, and if they ever missed a practice or game, buried them so deep on the bench they couldn’t see their way back out. For her, that made the calculation a no-brainer: never miss softball and deal with any consequences for missing soccer since I was more flexible. Except, she ultimately quit softball because it wasn’t fun getting yelled at all the time and then she washed out of soccer because she’d fallen so far behind the level of play by always missing everything for softball.

Image 5. There are many downsides of pay-to-play youth sports. One upside is that in a market-based system, players can choose the environment they want to participate in—and some will be more sustainable than others.

Prioritizing the first sport in the academic year – High school can be overwhelming and in a state of overwhelm, a natural way of ordering tasks/priorities is to approach it like a punch-list: start by completing the first indicated task, cross that off, and then move on to the next. But calculating opportunity cost requires projecting yourself into the future—if a spring sport is YOUR sport, that needs to always be part of the accounting and addressed in some way in the preceding seasons.

Prioritizing a less competitive “safety sport” – This goes back to the earlier discussion of pragmatism and also turns the concept of opportunity cost upside down because it calculates for the wrong opportunity. Again, opportunity cost is recognizing that the upsides of a choice are counterbalanced by the cost of losing out on the best alternatives that your decision then prevents you from doing. I have had several athletes who played a second sport going in to high school largely as a hedge, providing a fallback Plan B in case things didn’t pan out with their primary sport. But, then the opportunity costs of that second sport were steep enough to derail their primary sport—and they didn’t enjoy their safety sport enough to keep playing it and so ended up done with athletics entirely.

Not prioritizing anything – By virtue of genetic physical talent, some youth athletes have the sense of entitlement that inheritance brings and are certain that success comes simply by rolling up to the field. Most of us who have played or coached high school sports know this athlete and tell cautionary tales about them—the one who was the best at everything, up until they weren’t. And when that day came, they didn’t have the habits, tools, or a plan in place to change their downward trajectory.

How much of this did my players internalize? Time will tell. For the final slide on their phones, they discussed the meaning of the phrase “the journey is the reward”—as with the other slides and sayings, the girls put this concept into their own words, recognizing the importance of genuinely appreciating the moment that you are in and that the entirety of the process is of greater value than any one specific outcome. And, with that, they were off to go fill their plates.

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

Tsunami Bar Training Technology Review

Blog| ByMatt Cooper
Every now and then, a piece of training technology crosses my path that really catches my attention. When it comes to training technologies, their utility essentially falls into one of two brackets—either by filling a unique gap, enabling me to capture training benefits otherwise challenging to accomplish, or through making my workflow more efficient.

Tsunami Bar has been an incredibly useful discovery that has helped add to my programming by checking off a few birds with one singular stone. For one, I can’t think of another implement that’s quite comparable (and that comparison is what you usually see in a typical training technology review). Secondly, by both delivering novel adaptations while checking a couple boxes at once, Tsunami Bar is capable of both delivering results and improving programming efficiency.

What IS Tsunami Bar Exactly?

Without making this an engineering article, the most layperson’s way to describe Tsunami Bar is that it’s a barbell implement that intentionally allows for a strategic degree of bend or pliability.

This element of the bar being able to bend to an extent means the more juice you put into it from an intent standpoint, the more each end bends in an oscillatory fashion. There’s some level of overlap in this department from the old Earthquake Bars—although the Tsunami Bar adds to the motor control component by delivering on additional adaptations not seen in Earthquake Bars.

One can think of Louie Simmons’ oscillating kinetic energy concepts to picture how this works in some ways. In other words, working with a load that has perturbation elements to it or “live energy,” as some would say. Most reading this should be familiar with a more lightly loaded version of this with aquabags.

In this case, there’s not only the perturbation element that adds a layer of instability (for motor control and more complete tissue recruitment purposes), but also an elastic element as you have to reverse the bar in the opposite direction—more on these benefits in the next section.

Video 1. The Tsunami bar in action.

The company makes different bars that can accommodate different loads as well as different pliability degrees, but the Speed Bar is the flagship bar and the one I personally integrate into my work with athletes.

The ease of implementation is awesome here as there’s no software needed or technological barriers of entry. The bar is also 100% compatible with all known brands of bumper plates, so there’s no need to purchase additional accessories in order to implement the bar. The bar has appropriate surface changes for added grip as well as smooth sections—just like you’d find in most barbells.

The company offers different bars with varying degrees of pliability—the less pliable the bar, the heavier the load it can accommodate. However, in my opinion (unless you’re training for powerlifting), I’d rather stay to either extreme. For my more heavily loaded strength work that requires more control—say one of my linemen performing a typical bench press—I prefer to use a traditional barbell. When it comes time to capture the adaptations I’m after with Tsunami Bar, I’d rather go all-in on the motor control, speed eccentric overload, and elastic qualities promoted by the Speed Bar. I can see a need for in-between options for some, but for my unique needs that would be more birds, less stones.

How Does It Work & How Is It a Helpful Training Integration?

Getting to it, I think understanding the how helps us better understand where Tsunami Bar fits into the grand scheme of things, programming-wise. As I mentioned before, it’s not hard to grasp that a live load with a more reactive element is going to have a higher likelihood of capturing motor control elements and tissue recruitment than a more stable one.

Please understand, this isn’t an either-or scenario but rather a both situation. I’m not proposing you trade out your traditional, controlled strength work with Tsunami Bar. Rather, consider integrating this to tie the recipe together a la garlic salt, similar to how some coaches like to do traditional strength work and Olympic lift/power variations.

Speaking of both, I find that the Tsunami Bar helps capture adaptations traditionally exclusive to more friction-driven, muscular work (slow, controlled, loaded resistance patterns) as well as more elastic, reactive athletic patterns.
I find that the Tsunami Bar helps capture adaptations traditionally exclusive to more friction-driven, muscular work… as well as more elastic, reactive athletic patterns, says @RewireHP. Share on X

Video 1. Tsunami Bar pulse squats: “move with the wave, make it elastic, keep it elastic.”

I’m a big fan of the “reversal strength” element, if you will. The bar bend phenomenon means if I actively push the bar up during—say, a bench press—the ends of the bar keep traveling upward. I then have to decelerate and reverse the load, actively pulling it back downwards into position.

The same goes for the downward phase of the movement. The load comes down with such speed that I have to actively decelerate and reroute it in the other direction back up.

Thus, it has the potential (depending on execution) to turn traditional lifts into dual-concentric phenomena. This is similar to real life sporting actions, in which an athlete intentionally yields into a movement and concentrically explodes out of it.

At risk of turning this into a biomechanics article, I’ll just say that a lot of traditional lifts involve concentrically pushing a load in one direction and eccentrically fighting it on the way “down” the opposite side of the propulsion arc (think Bill Hartmann and Dr. Pat Davidson’s propulsion arc concepts).

But this concentric/eccentric distinction factor means Tsunami Bar offers something more akin to the overcoming/yielding, expansion/compression qualities seen in sport.

Additionally, this is all happening at an appreciable velocity compared to the way most strength work is executed. In other words, that means athletes are benefitting from a higher speed eccentric overload (as opposed to slow maximal strength eccentric overload).

How Do I Personally Integrate Tsunami Bar Into My Workflow?

Tying this back to the ground floor, in-the-trenches, applied-side of things, Tsunami Bar fills a few gaps for me.

For one, I find that it helps capture both friction and elastic elements, as I mentioned before. This means that I can concurrently have my athletes benefit from traditional elements of loaded strength work while also capturing elements of timing, impulse, slinging weight in a more elastic capacity, reversal strength/concentric-eccentric changeover dynamics.

This has implications for potentially making some of our strength work have a more dynamic or ballistic element to it, which could in turn capture some athletic qualities that transfer to sport (and which are traditionally more or less absent from the weight room).

Both those elements and the reactive element of needing to control a live, perturbation-heavy load means there are not just athletic benefits, but also rehabilitation benefits. Some are not fully ready to take the car out on the track when it comes to sprinting, jumping, cutting, and beyond. The further down the road someone goes in the return to play pipeline, generally the more athletic patterns they can be exposed to.

Some are familiar with these ideas of initially integrating high-volume, low-impact extensive plyometrics eventually layering in more intensive plyometrics (low volume, higher impact). Depending on the sport and injury, integrating Tsunami Bar into one’s strength training can actually check a lot of boxes with regards to motor control, more complete tissue recruitment, and more in order to help prep them for some of the forces encountered in sport.

That element and the full bucket of adaptations it helps capture means it’s a useful durability and rehabilitation tool in many return-to-play scenarios.

As far as specific resistance patterns I enjoy performing with the bar, I’ve found the most ROI comes from the Tsunami bench press (useful push/pull element), jammer press variations (ton of motor control and recruitment value add here), jammer row variations (for the same purpose), and lightly-loaded oscillatory squat variations.

Although you can certainly load the bar up higher than this, I generally don’t go higher than about 50-75% of what someone’s stable barbell max output would be. For a more specific frame of reference, I find myself using as little as a 25 or 45 on each side most often, occasionally doubling up with both or more for something like a jammer press if an athlete is strong enough.

Like a mechanical bull, the bar can be a lot for novice athletes—so, truth be told, it’s probably best suited for those who have something closer to an intermediate training age with foundational movement literacy and some weight room experience in place. That said, you can certainly set them up for success and introduce Tsunami Bar sooner if you:

Choose the right patterns.

Don’t overload the bar.

Cue athletes to go at something closer to half speed initially.

The bar is lighter by design, so you’ll generally want to load the weight on the ground or with a partner to avoid the bar flipping to the side.
The Tsunami Bar is lighter by design, so you’ll generally want to load the weight on the ground or with a partner to avoid the bar flipping to the side, says @RewireHP. Share on X
This is more anecdotal than anything, but it’s worth mentioning that training with Tsunami Bar is also fun and engaging for athletes. It’s healthy for clients to crave novelty, and we as coaches are sometimes tasked with trying to check the same boxes as we integrate enough “newness” into programming, without getting too far off the reservation into novelty for novelty’s sake.

I slot Tsunami Bar in during rehabilitation phases and to occasionally switch things up for durability. Although it checks a lot of boxes, I would say its overall value is in adding more sports-like dynamism to the weight room. It’s not going to replace your agility work and plyometrics (nor would the creators want you to throw those things out)—nor is it going to replace most of your free weight work. However, I can certainly see it taking over the strength-speed side of the weight room traditionally reserved for Olympic Lift variations and traditional patterns.
We as coaches are sometimes tasked with trying to check the same boxes as we integrate enough “newness” into programming, without getting too far off the reservation into novelty for novelty’s sake, says @RewireHP. Share on X
Customer Experience

Speaking of the creators, I cannot say enough good things about the Tsunami Bar team. I think I can speak for all of us coaches when I say the tech companies that come in and try to disrupt fitness or performance generally miss their mark. For most of us, it’s not about being unwilling to embrace innovation so much as it is about the proposed innovations adding complexity while not adding enough R.O.I. to justify said complexity.

With Tsunami Bar, you not only don’t have to worry about that—you can be confident the tech was designed by coaches for coaches, as their team is made up of a diverse group of engineers, researchers, applied physicists, and coaches who are still in the trenches to this day. They are also an education-first company whose concepts involve the entirety of the training process—not just their own products in a salesy capacity. They not only conduct seminars and host ever-growing online educational content, they’re also quite accessible should you ever have any questions on the programming side of things. A+ and class acts in this department, for sure.

With Tsunami Bar, I can be confident I’m giving athletes something they enjoy while also adding something in that’s helping me accomplish everything I need to do on the back end. Training with the implement is such a unique felt sensory experience that at the very least I recommend coaches go try the bar and see what it’s like for themselves. You just might find it helps fill in some gaps in training and deliver some useful adaptations in your athletes.

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

Impacting Game Day in Collegiate Softball

Blog| ByTimothy Rattan
If you’re familiar with the collegiate softball schedule, you know it’s a year that spans an off-season from September to January, then ramps up from February to May with intense practices, games, and travel. The off-season prioritizes General Preparatory Phase training to boost the athletes’ size, speed, and strength. As February approaches and schedules fill with practices and double-headers, maintaining a strategic programming structure becomes essential, despite challenges like missed lifts due to travel.

Having grown up in the world of baseball, a few truths about ballplayers always stand out:

Both baseball and softball are governed by routines, and disrupting a player’s routine can significantly impact their mental focus.

The period before the first pitch involves a lengthy, deliberate warm-up process.

Trying to influence the entire warm-up process as a strength coach has the potential to enhance the athlete performance on the field, elevate the status and integration of strength coaches within the team structure, and garner recognition from players and sport coaches alike. I’ve observed that during their daily warm-ups, athletes often perform their movements mechanically. The intentionality behind their warm-up routines diminishes over time because these routines have remained repetitive and basic since childhood.

Reflecting on my own experience in baseball, I recall doing the same dynamic warm-up from the age of 5 until I was 15. The routine never evolved and became more of a tradition, causing my teammates and me to simply go through the motions. In athletics, we understand that without intention, we rarely see any progress or improvement. Moreover, the impact of intent facilitates athletes’ ongoing development, even on game days.

Video 1. Overall Activation warm-up showcasing TRX Y-Rows with an external rotation, Waterbag Alternating Switches, ½ Kneeling Banded Rows. Note how the warm-up is directly on the field, so athletes can transition into individual warm-ups.

A Standard Game Day Warm-Up

Typically, teams arrive at the field three hours before the scheduled first pitch to set up. During this time, players will pull the tarps off the field, set up the mound and infield area, and prepare the field for batting practice. Following this, there’s a rather routine and basic “dynamic warm-up” session aimed at loosening up. This phase tends to be leisurely and lacks urgency. Once warmed up, the team moves on to batting practice, typically lasting about 30 minutes. Subsequently, the opposing team takes their turn at batting practice, which also spans approximately 30 minutes. During this interval, players often engage in lighthearted banter, enjoy snacks, and relax.

As the game approaches, usually 45 to 60 minutes before the first pitch, teams’ transition to throwing, arm care routines, and infield/outfield drills—essential components of the baseball/softball warm-up routine. While some teams may have variations in their routines, this general structure is one I’ve consistently observed over time. While I don’t criticize these routines, based on my experience in the sport, I often felt my body wasn’t fully prepared for the game due to the leisurely warm-up period. As previously mentioned, when my teammates and I went through our dynamic warm-up, it often lacked intentionality. There was little intensity, and I didn’t feel my muscles were properly activated. We didn’t incorporate much tendon or muscle loading before games because it wasn’t customary to do so. This became problematic for me, as I often didn’t feel in sync with the game until after the first pitch, sometimes not until after my first at-bat. Now, as a strength coach in collegiate athletics, I strive to enhance game day routines even more.

For me, the solution was straightforward: Game Day becomes the prime opportunity to continue impacting our athletes’ development and ensuring they’re fully prepared for the challenge ahead—seven innings of competitive softball! This experience turned out to be the most gratifying period of my career as a strength coach. Being directly involved in game day preparations and collaborating closely with our exceptional softball coaching staff at Simon Fraser University, who truly integrated me into the team as a whole. Typically, as a strength coach, you’re part of the support staff for teams and may not always feel fully involved in the team dynamics. However, everything changes when you step into the athletes’ environment and witness the excitement they have on game day.
Game Day becomes the prime opportunity to continue impacting our athletes' development and ensuring they're fully prepared for the challenge ahead—seven innings of competitive softball!, says Timothy Rattan. Share on X
So, how did we manage game day preparations? Here’s a comprehensive breakdown of our pre-game routines, covering both the day before and the hours leading up to the first pitch.

Pre-Game Lift: Day Before Game

The day before a game follows a standard procedure where the team works within the strength coach’s environment. During these sessions, lifts serve the purpose of enhancing potentiation. We utilize various Olympic lifts, jump variations, and movements that generate high impulse—applied force that changes rapidly over time. The primary objective is to activate the athletes’ nervous systems without inducing complete fatigue before game day. Our focus isn’t on chasing muscle fatigue or achieving significant strength and hypertrophy gains during these sessions.

Breakdown of Power/Potentiation Day

Movement Prep (5-10 mins)

Include rotator cuff work, grip strengthening exercises, ankle yielding isometrics (20-60 second duration), hip mobility and stability exercises

Neuro Prep (5-10 mins)

High CNS Movements – Which can include Medicine Ball throws, Sprints, Low Level Extensive Plyometrics (pogo jumps, jumping rope, reactive single leg jumps)

Primary Lift (25-35 mins)

Olympics lifts & Variations – Generally High Pulls, Hang Power Cleans, Trap Bar Shrugs, Trap Bar Cleans

Jump Variations – Intensive focus. Includes Broad Jumps, Box Jumps, Approach Hurdle Jumps

High Impulse Movements –Iincludes kettlebell swings, kettlebell passes, medicine ball throws, waterbag swings

Loaded Resistance Movements – During these movements the goal is to have load applied to the oblique and the contralateral oblique sling. We use loaded cable swings from a high angle to mimic a swing, minimize explosiveness on this exercise. The major high speed rotational movement will derive from medicine ball throws or waterbag swings.

When I tell the student-athletes “today is our power day,” they understand it’s about moving weights swiftly and energetically. This session also serves as our final opportunity of the week to expose them to high-speed activities, incorporating controlled volumes of sprints. The pre-game lifts inject positive energy and ensure the team is primed for the upcoming day.

Game Day Activation: Athlete & Coaching Buy-In

The first step to ensuring smooth game day activation was to align myself and the coaching staff. Luckily, the SFU Red Leafs’ softball coaching staff were receptive to collaborative ideas, and throughout the season, we worked seamlessly together. Kudos to the coaching staff for their openness to making adjustments to enhance our performance on the field. In discussions with the head coach, Stacy Fournier, we reviewed the entire game day routine leading up to the first pitch. I identified two key areas where we could make a difference:

The initial warm-up before batting practice.

The 30-minute gap while the opposing team takes batting practice.

These were critical moments where maintaining optimal nervous system activation and readiness were essential.

The next step involved discussions with the team captains. Understanding the importance of superstitions among softball players, my goal was to reassure the team that we were not making drastic changes, but rather adjustments to enhance their preparation. Once this was clarified, we moved on to implementing the new routine leading up to first pitch, detailed in Figure 1 below.
Understanding the importance of superstitions among softball players, my goal was to reassure the team that we were not making drastic changes, but rather adjustments to enhance their preparation, says Timothy Rattan. Share on X
Figure 1. Game Day Operations.

Game Day Activation: Pitchers vs Position Players

Initially, we divided into two groups: Pitchers and Fielders. It was crucial to maintain a different pace for pitchers to preserve their flow and mental focus. During our team’s batting practice, we focused on activation exercises tailored for pitchers. This included dynamic movements to enhance hip stability and mobility, activation drills for the arm and rotator cuff, impulse exercises to improve hip rotation and projection (simulating pitching, and short-distance (10-yard) sprints to simulate the impact on the landing leg while on the mound.

Video 2. Showcasing the major movement patterns we cover during pitcher activation. Using Cossack squats and tripod around-the-worlds to activate and stretch out both the obliques and hip complex. Waterbag drill will be the primary focus for starting pitchers of the day to simulate throwing a pitch.

With pitchers, I made minimal adjustments, while for position players, we adjusted their routine more extensively. Referring to Figure 1, we conducted two separate warm-ups. We kept the team’s usual dynamic warm-up intact to respect their established approach. After their dynamic warm-up and a series of waterfall sprints (requested by the captains), we proceeded to “Activation 1” before batting practice.

Here, the focus was on preparing for hitting by engaging the obliques, hip complex, and enhancing rotational flexibility. This phase included dynamic stabilization exercises with water bags, an overcoming isometric component, and ballistic movements using light bands. After targeting all key areas for swinging, the team smoothly transitioned into batting practice.

Video 3. Before batting practice, it’s a chance to warm up the obliques and emphasize rotational activation. Specifically, we incorporate both a waterbag swing (top video) and a variation of the Pallof press (bottom video) to simulate the movements used during a swing.

After batting practice, I aimed to improve the 30-minute downtime in our pre-game routine. Instead of idle time, we introduced a 15-minute activation session that differed from the traditional “arm care” routine typically seen. A typical arm care regimen includes performing rotator cuff exercises with various resistance bands. These exercises focus on both external and internal rotation movements. Such routines are often rooted in tradition, which isn’t necessarily problematic. However, they can become repetitive over time, lacking the necessary progression required for adaptation to occur.

During this period, athletes had more autonomy in the total amount of volume they completed prior to first pitch. This activation included impulse variations, tissue strengthening exercises, and dynamic movements, focusing on activating the posterior chain and shoulder girdle as shown in sample videos.

Breakdown of Activation 2

Med Ball – Para – ½ Kneel Press or vertical toss

TRX Y-Row

Waterbag Rotational Swing

Waterbag Alternating Switch

½ Kneel Band Row

Following this brief session, the team still had time for personal arm care routines and relaxation before transitioning to throwing and team warm-ups on the field.

Video 4. After Batting Practice has been completed, the team then transitions to the field for activation 2. The video above showcases 3 different exercises, TRX Y-Row to External rotation, ½ Kneel Banded Rows (bottom video) & Waterbag Alternating Switch (Top Video).

Being Part of the Team

In athletics and sports, game day stands out as the pinnacle that excites players, coaches, staff, and fans alike. It’s a day when everyone unites to strive for victory as a team. Establishing a robust game day routine that preserves athletes’ nervous system integrity before the first pitch is crucial.
Game day stands out as the pinnacle that excites players, coaches, staff, and fans alike... Establishing a robust game day routine that preserves athletes' nervous system integrity before the first pitch is crucial. Share on X
Unlike the conventional approach—where softball players warmed up and then waited around for up to 1.5 hours—we segmented activations to minimize downtime and significantly enhance athlete development on game days. Returning to the diamond to influence the game in fresh ways has been among the most rewarding experiences in my young career as a strength coach. Even though traditional softball warm-ups were firmly established, players found this new approach to be invigorating and revitalizing for game day operations. According to player feedback, they felt more prepared as the first pitch approached, which was the primary objective behind these adjustments.

For those interested in adopting a similar strategy and avoiding the monotony of being solely a “weight room person,” I highly recommend immersing yourself in the athletes’ environment, collaborating closely with coaching staff and players, and injecting new energy into athlete development work.

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…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

Dechant, Z. (2018). Movement over Maxes: Developing the Foundation for Baseball Performance. Independently Published.

Schlesinger, C. (2023). Micro-Dosing Performance. Lecture.

Care, T. (2024). Holistic Performance Management Concurrent Model. Lecture-NSCA.

Rattan, T (2023). Creating a Plan for In-Season Softball Training.

Blog

How Altitude Training Impacts Glycolytic Enzyme Activity

What an Altitude Training Regimen Should Contain

Considerations for Altitude Training

Dietary Considerations in Altitude Training

Optimizing Altitude Training and Scrutinizing the Details

Reference

The Vertical Jump and It’s Link with Speed

What Kind of Training Does an Athlete Need to Improve Their Jump Height?

Eccentric or Concentric? Paused Squat Jump—Eccentric Utilisation

Establishing a Loaded Jump Profile—Does the Athlete Need to Work on Max Strength or RFD?

The Bosco Index

Putting It Together

Case Study — What Does this Look Like in Practice?

References

Understanding Vertical Jump Mechanics

Features of the Skyhook Contact Mat

Design & Portability

Technological Capabilities

Usability

Tracking & Measuring Capabilities

Who the Skyhook Contact Mat is For

Setting Up the Skyhook Contact Mat

Training Techniques Using the Skyhook Contact Mat

Monitoring & Analyzing Performance

Tips for Maximizing Results

Conclusion

Voyer: The Early Years

The Voyer Seminar Experience

Everything Is Connected

References

Implementing Load Monitoring

1. Learn the hardware and software inside and out.

3. Create a daily, weekly, and monthly report skeleton with the metrics you think are the most important.

4. Utilize a data management and storage system.

5. Run your system and evaluate it thoroughly and objectively.

Identifying the Phases of Acceleration

Why Transitional Acceleration Is Crucial in Team Sports and How to Train It

Careful Addition Requires Thoughtful Subtraction

References

Methods

Statistics Simplified

Results

Discussion

What Is Not Important

What Is Important

What To Do With This?

Bodyweight

Produce Force Fast

Produce High Relative Forces?

Conclusion

What Is Power In Sport?

Power Definition In Sport

Power in Physical Fitness

Building Power with Velocity-Based Training

VBT Devices for Power

Conclusion

FAQs

Opportunity Cost in Youth and High School Sports

Changing with the Game: From “Play Everything” to “Be Purposeful”

How You Get Better Is Different for Everyone, But Everyone Needs a Plan to Get Better

What IS Tsunami Bar Exactly?

How Does It Work & How Is It a Helpful Training Integration?

How Do I Personally Integrate Tsunami Bar Into My Workflow?

Customer Experience

A Standard Game Day Warm-Up

Pre-Game Lift: Day Before Game

Game Day Activation: Athlete & Coaching Buy-In

Game Day Activation: Pitchers vs Position Players

Being Part of the Team

References

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