Rethinking VBT: Peak vs. Average Velocity in Strength Lifts

This blog is a result of my conversation at NSCA National Conference in KC with Coach Joe Kenn. He and I were talking about VBT and how he thinks coaches should use peak velocity with all movements, not just jumps/Olympic lifts. When I heard this I leaned back and listened to what he was saying, and he made a great point.

One of the things he talked about was the fact that everything else that gets communicated to athletes is their peak (or best) something. How fast did they run, how high did they jump, etc…yet when they squat, bench, deadlift, lunge, etc…the number used most of the time is average.

As he said, if S&C coaches communicated average speed on a field with the sport coach - no one would be impressed. So why do it in the weight room? Another point he made was the fact we could be self-limiting the athletes with this metric.

Much like a self-fulfilling prophecy, are we caping the average velocity on a back squat by looking at the average velocity? What he was saying is, from his experiment with a high level athlete, when displaying peak velocity to an athlete during a non-ballistic movement, you will improve the average velocity.

This was something I had not thought of. I always had done average velocity for strength movements, and peak for ones where athletes leave the ground. Now I am going to look into this.

How will I do this?

I will use my Vitruve VBT encoder for 1 rep max test on squat, bench, deadlift, and split squat. During these attempts I will set my primary metric to peak velocity. However, since Vitruve’s app is the best, I can set average velocity as the secondary metric.

In this way I can still record the average velocity, and then be able to see how average velocity improves/not improves when peak velocity is the main variable displaying. I will also have range of motion be a metric that is measured for all attempts. In this way that data can also be tracked for standardization of movement execution.

After I have 1RM for all these movements, I will perform sets and reps at 70%, 80%, and 90% in training. I will again have peak velocity set as the primary metric. I will attempt to have the peak velocity at 1.20 m/s as Joe said that was the number he was telling his athlete to hit.
Why? No clue, but that is where I will start. And with my intent to hit that number, my hypothesis is that my average velocity for each associated average velocity will improve.

Stay tunned to see how this goes.

I think you should give it a shot yourself, and if you want in on the training plan - email me at justin@strengthcoachnetwork.com and we can lift together remotely.

PS - one other thing that Joe talked about was keeping 10x2 at a certain weight constant every week in this athlete’s training. In doing so, he was able to monitor fatigue week to week. The sets, reps, and weight was the same - but how would the athlete move the bar? In doing so, Joe (and us all) could measure central nervous system fatigue. I am a fan of this and will include it in my training plan. WIll report on it as well.

For the most up to date info on VBT amd to get your hands on the best VBT encoder at the best price on the market - head over to vitruve.fit to learn more from Vitruve.