Why Strength Numbers Alone Don’t Mean Your Athlete Is Ready

All of this came from a conversation with Coach Joe Alexander from Johns Hopkins. Joe and I worked together from 2018-2019 and we still stay in touch bouncing ideas off one another. We were talking about athlete assessment and best practices to know when an athlete is cleared to play.  The weight room stuff is very cut and dry for most strength and conditioning coaches - where was the athlete injured (upper or lower body) and then check to see his or her strength there.



For this example if someone had a knee injury most S&C coaches would look to see how this athlete's pre- to post-injury 1RM for various movements: squat, deadlift, RDL, lunge, SL squat, etc...Those movements generally. have 1RM that is tracked by S&C coaches, especially with how easy TeamBuildr makes data collection for 1RM, but we need to make sure the same qualities get assessed on the field.

If an athlete has equal or better numbers in the weight room compared to their injury that is great, but sport does not happen in the weight room, it happens on the field. The speed of contraction on the field/court is exponetionally higher than the weight room. So we need to ensure our athletes are back to baseline on the field or court. Some of you might ask how?



Many coaches will have some linear speed testing on athletes. This may be a 10 yard or 40 yard test. This is better than nothing. What I would recommend is having both an acceleration time and max velocity time. Why? Simple, you want to be able to speak confidently to the athlete, sport coaches, and medical team about the return to play process. Say this athlete is around 88% of their sprint time - sounds nice. But when you dig deeper they are within 88% of their acceleration best time, but are at 70% of their max velocity. This would indicate the athlete is at best 79% recovered and ready to return to sport (88 + 70 / 2).

When viewed this way everyone in the process knows what area needs to be "worked on" to help the athlete return to sport. This will also slow the sport coach down with respect to rushing the athlete back. When hearing 88% they will think - sweet bring him or her back - but the 70% will bring them back down to reality.

The above example is only looking at linear speed, what about change in direction and best ways to assess it? My favorite and what I was doing at Towson was using 3 tests - short shuttle, 505, and modified 505. The short shuttle is the 5-10-5 or commonly referred to as pro agility. We know that it is not agility because there is no reaction to a stimulus - but you know the drill I am talking about. Image below of how to run this drill


(Image from Dashr app)

The way we would test this was athletes in a 2 point stance to start and they would touch the line with their foot. If they missed the line with their foot their rep would not count. I have talked at lengths about why I did not make athletes touch the line with their hand - I am not going to do that again here. When we did pro day training yes they touched the line because they would have to at pro day - but for our data collection we did not.

Maybe you did not hear about the 505 test, I had not until 2019 or 2020. Image below on how to run that test.


(Image from Dashr app)

I loved this drill because now I had a 180 degree and 90 degree change in direction - thus enhancing my change in direction portfolio. I went one step further and did my version of the modified 505 where athletes started 1 yard back from the laser and reflector. In doing so they had less speed going into the 180 degree cut.

The final drill we would assess was a 20 yard C curve with a 5 yard bend at 10 yards. We would assess these different drills on our change in direction day in off-season training. This day was usually Friday. We would record, rank, and publish the times from the day to ensure max effort, and to bread competition. I bring this up to highlight the fact that we would collect this data on the regular.

With regular data collection (on acceleration, max velocity, C curve, 5-10-5, 505, and modified 505) we could accurately be able to compare pre- to post-injury sprint numbers. For clarification purposes - our acceleration timing and C curve was conducted with the athlete in a 2 point stance 1 yard behind the laser and reflector, and the max velocity timing was a fly 10 with a 30 or 20 yard build (skill players had 30 yards, linemen had 20 yards).

In doing our timing this way ALL of our on field sprint times were valid and reliable.There was no singular coach who was the one who had to start the timing gate. All the coaches has to to was ensure the athlete was stationary for 3 seconds at the start of the accel, curve, 5-10-5, and modified 505 - and then ensure lines were touched with the foot in the 5-10-5, 505, and modified 505. With our efforts focused there it was clear if a foot hit the line or not, and it was clear if someone was till for the three seconds.

Now when an athlete has these 6 on field times, combined with the jump assessments (CMJ, RSI, SL-DL RSI, Squat Jump, Broad Jump, SL-DL Broad, and Triple Broad) and weight room assessment we knew athletes can come back to sport safely. Add in the fact that your jumps (no broad) are done on Hawkin Dynamics force plates to get R/L feedback on DL jumps - you no longer are guessing or wondering about athlete health - you know.

Did all of this take time? Yup it sure did. But during the RTP process you have time. During practice when an athlete is doing rehab, they should be doing it with you. Make your plan and design your training. Get your Dashr timing gates out a practice and go off to an area where the rest of the team is not practicing. In doing so your RTP athlete will still feel part of the team as he or she will be be competing back on the field, their teammates and coaches will see them timing, and this positive psychological benefit cannot be over emphasized. Don't worry about writing the athletes times down, your Dashr system and app has the ability to store times and drills - take advantage of it.

You can even get more sport specific with your sprint tests if you want. Take a look at this example from Dashr:



This is just one of MANY examples that they provide for different sports. Combine these drills with the "basic" 6 I talked about earlier and now you are in business! Learn about the different tests here on the Dashr site.

PS - I have the silver and blue at Goldfinch. We had the black before as well. I am silver all day every day.