There is a common question that gets asked constantly when it comes to athletic development- how strong is too strong? I by no means have all the answers, but I do believe there is point of diminishing returns when it comes to strength development and if time isn’t being spent focusing and developing other performance qualities, then we’re doing our athletes a disservice when it comes to their overall development.
At what point in an athlete’s development are we taking away from other physical qualities that need to be developed? It’s safe to say that what we do in the weight room is very general in terms of developing fundamentals movements and getting stronger in those areas, but at some point, we need to learn how to convert strength into higher levels of speed, rate of force development, and power to maximize athletic performance.
Finding out where an athlete fits on the absolutist strength- absolute speed end of the continuum is a good place to see where their strengths, weaknesses, and deficiencies lie. Now we can go to work on them and build the necessary performance qualities we’re chasing by replicating specific movement patterns, speeds, and loads they’re going to encounter on the playing field.
This is where it’s also useful to have the ability to measure force outputs. We all know what gets measured, gets managed. @proteusmotion has been a great tool for us to train and monitor power and velocity to ensure we’re staying on the right path and making better coaching decisions for our athletes as the goal is to drive results without beating them up. We’re also utilizing @vitruvefit to monitor bar speed to ensure we are staying within the proper m/s zone to elicit the adaptations we’re chasing. We have had success utilizing other tools like @trainwithpush or even a radar gun to monitor medicine ball throws to drive intent, competition, and better outcomes.
The most important component to athletic development in my mind is giving them the availability to play every day when the time comes. Some of the technology and data has given us immediate feedback we need day-to-day to ensure we’re not beating athletes up, keeping them healthy, and driving results.
