A Behind Closed Door Battle to Embrace Force Plate Technology
The use of force plate (FP) technology is common across most high-performance training environments these days. In some circles some might say that is you aren’t using FPs you are “old school”. There has been a surge to “keep up with the Jones’s” because of this and this has occurred in many situations without really knowing the “what, why and how” of FP use. However, what has become more and more apparent to me lately is a strong resistance to embrace FP technology by some practitioners. Quite a few high-performance facilities and franchises, particularly lead by practitioners around my vintage or older have resisted the urge to “keep up with the Jones’s” and are also facing significant barriers in adopting FP technology. When I dig deeper and peel back the layers, there are some key issues that seem to present and interestingly, it’s not always finance that creates the greatest barrier. This post is specifically for those that are struggling to embrace FP technology because of certain barriers.
Three of the main barriers are 1) a hesitancy to adopt the technology on the premise that the information provided won’t really enhance what one has been doing successfully for many years; 2) a feeling of being overwhelmed by the variety and sheer amount of data to be interpreted and 3) a feeling of embarrassment where a leading practitioner feels that they should know more about FP technology in light of the knowledge and skills that their subordinates and colleagues possess.
Hesitancy
Let me address each of the barriers through this post whilst I walk through my own personal journey and battles with FP technology. My journey started around 2008 when I started a new job with the English Institute of Sport (EIS) leading up to the 2012 home Olympic games. At the time the EIS was revamping their assessment protocols post-Beijing and there was a big drive to align all testing protocols and procedures across the institute. Although FP use was in full swing across the institute by then, there was certainly a need to align all protocols and procedures for the various FP assessments that were being used.
I remember during my first meeting with my line manager, he asked me what assessments I used to identify the physical characteristics of my players and what I used to determine the direction of my strength program (having just moved from professional team sports). My answer was pretty simple “I used 1RMs (Back Squat, Bench Press and Bench Pull) for my strength measures, I used Countermovement Jump height for leg power, Drop Jump height for reactive strength (both performed with a vertec type measurement system) and a Med ball toss as an indication of full body power output. Along with change of direction assessment and my 40-metre sprint splits I had everything I needed to make decisions from a strength, power, speed perspective and these measures had served me well for the best part of a decade leading up to that day.
Before my first week at the EIS was out, the then Head of S&C for the institute visited our region for a quality assurance trip. We were asked to take an athlete through the full process of neuromuscular diagnostics. From FP set up, including calibrating the plates, through to running a range of neuromuscular assessments – isometric strength test and a range of jump tests, including loaded jumps, from start to finish in the most optimal order. We then needed to extract the raw data, put it in to an excel spreadsheet and build out from the force-time data to extrapolate metrics like velocity and power output for each test. Finally, we had to interpret the results and identify where an athlete may be deficient and what direction their program should take. I had no idea what was going on, I was completely out of my depth, I felt like I didn’t deserve my job and I remember feeling quite angry and frustrated. I was doing just fine without FPs but I was now feeling like what I had been doing for the previous 10 years was somehow inadequate and that I may well have been doing my athletes a disservice.
That day I decided to try and immerse myself into FP technology and learn as much as I could. I figured that if after I had given it a good go, if I didn’t feel like it was adding value I would happily walk away from the technology and go back to me tried and tested. I found it quite easy to put my ego to the side as I explored FP technology. I approached this with the mindset of could this further benefit my athletes despite my beliefs and my previous experience. It has always been, and it always will be about the athletes and because of this, if there is something that might genuinely add value, despite it challenging what I do and what I think I already know, I find it easy to put the ego to the side, listen, learn and observe (if only for a minute).
I slowly started working my way through this technology and to be honest I wasn’t convinced. It was interesting but I wasn’t sure it was value adding above anything I was already doing. Around a year later my understanding of FP technology got the rocket it truly needed. I was encouraged to internally apply for another EIS role with a truly World class program. The program was very well funded and was absolutely dominating the podium and smashing world records for fun. I was confident I was going for a job working with truly world class practitioners who were leaving no stone unturned. I somehow managed to get shortlisted and went to interview with 4 other candidates, to this day it was the toughest most comprehensive interview I have ever done. In one part of the interview process I was ushered into a room where on the desk was a small pile of A4 sheets of paper. I was told I had 45 minutes to review and make notes of the information on the sheets and then discuss my thoughts with the panel for a further 45 minutes.
On the sheets there was a tonne of “squiggly lines” [force-time traces] and a tonne of de-identified data from a range of athletes. We had to identify the different assessments from the “squiggly lines”, what was occurring at each time point and what the differences were between each athlete and why. The data was a range of numerical data followed by what looked like the Greek alphabet: N, N/N, w, w×kg, N, N×s-1, m×s-1, m×s2, kg×m/s. We had to interpret the FP derived data for each athlete and provide training recommendation off the back of this. I didn’t get the job! However, it dawned on me that if the very best in the world thought this stuff was important then I’d better put a lot more effort into learning it.
I wasn’t long after that interview that any remaining hesitancy I might have had in adopting FP technology had completely gone. The data that FPs provided me with was far more comprehensive and accurate than any of my previous strength or power related data. Thus, the relationships between the physical qualities I was assessing and actual performance, significantly improved. My data was now far richer in terms of identifying distinct attributes and strategies that underpinned the more global neuromuscular outputs and I could now direct training, recovery and rehabilitation far more effectively. My own personal growth aside, I was now in a more effective position to support my athletes in achieving their dreams and I’ve never looked back.
Overwhelmed
The world of FP technology has moved on leaps and bounds since then. Wireless, cloud storage, mini light-weight portable dual plates, movement recognition, real time analysis/feedback and any metric your creative or “mad scientist” mind can conjure up are all now available. In the past it was a laborious and clunky process. It makes me shiver thinking how long it would have taken to take a 46-man AFL squad through their weekly CMJ monitoring, analyse all the jumps and give them feedback (let alone decide on training modifications for that day). What takes less than an hour to collect, analyse, feedback and make decisions now, would have taken a day a number of years ago.
However, along with the simplicity and efficiency, the sheer amount of information one can now receive, in an instant, can be a very overwhelming experience. For those that are overwhelmed by it all, I share your pain. There is so much information it’s hard to know where to start. On top of this there’s no clear “plug and play” criteria eg. look at this number but ignore this one; make decisions on this number from day to day but just look at trends on this one over the long term. It can be an absolute minefield but at the same time that’s also the strength of FP analysis. We are now able to dive much deeper into the force time strategies/signatures of each of our athletes.
I suggest eradicating as much noise as possible when you are starting out. Ignore the metrics that don’t make absolute sense to you, it’s highly likely they are nonsensical to most anyway. Several metrics are there to satisfy different consumers for different reasons so don’t feel that because they are displayed, they must be important of even meaningful. I remember a few years back I was exploring a range of loaded countermovement jump data. I was trying to find out what relative load caused a countermovement jump to slow down so much that the countermovement became too slow to have effective elastic contribution. I was very lucky my biomechanics colleague at the time was the ForceDecks co-founder, Dr Phil Graham-Smith. For every concocted blend of velocity, time, force, acceleration and displacement I could come up with to explain the change in the amortisation phase of the jump he would direct me back to the “principles”. I thought I was being clever, maybe even innovative, but all I was doing was creating more and more noise when the most meaningful answers were already there. Stick to the basics while you are starting out, over time some of the other metrics may be of interest or tell you something more. All the metrics are derived in one way or another from force-time (impulse) data. The closer you stick to this the further you are away from error! Jump height (Imp-Mom) (cm) might not sound very sexy but it’s a very reliable measure underpinned by sound “principles”.
Steer well away from the metrics that are not reliable, like RFD. There are some great recent articles out there on the reliability of countermovement jump metrics that can help guide you but also the live analysis can give you a clear indication of the intra-test reliability of the metric you are looking at too. Along with your output measure eg. Jump height find a reliable descriptor of that output. Time related metrics are a simple and reliable place to start eg. eccentric duration (ms). These types of metrics are what I call “cohort independent”. Basically, you can use these with most trained cohorts, and they will most likely give you good reliable information. One of the reasons you don’t always get a “plug and play” is because of the “cohort dependent” metrics. These are the metrics that work well for a particular cohort but not for another cohort, maybe another sport or athletes at a different stage of their development. It’s a metric like lower limb stiffness (N×s-1 ) of which I’ve found to be a reliable and informative metric for a cohort of sprinters but in a squad of AFL players this metric when plotted, looks like a vast mountain range of consecutive deep valleys and lofty peaks. It’s important for you to find out what metrics are best for your cohort, and you will do this over time as you explore the data.
Embarrassment
I get it! It doesn’t seem right to have imposter syndrome when you’ve been in the game 25+ years and you’ve achieved so much over your career with the athletes in your care. You’ve climbed up the ladder and now you are leading others and spreading your net of influence on athletes further through your staff and colleagues. For all the invaluable experience you can share with your staff you can’t help but know that there’s so much of this “new stuff” that you just don’t know.
You nod and agree when they talk FPs, discrete phases of a jump and some convoluted metric but really there’s a level of embarrassment, where you feel something deemed so critical these days you just don’t know enough about. Well because you’ve read this far you know my story back in my early EIS days and you know the reason and the attitude by which I approached acquiring this new knowledge. We’ve got to get comfortable knowing that the next generation of coaches are getting educated at a rapid rate and their breadth of knowledge in many cases leaves our undergraduate education for dead.
We need to be vulnerable and show a sense of humility to our fellow colleagues and staff. More often than not, this is met with a great deal of respect and warmth. A leader brave enough to say “I don’t know enough about that…” “could you teach me about it sometime” sets an exceptional example to the team and is uplifting to the staff member concerned. You’ll be able to learn while you also get to learn first-hand about your staff members ability to teach effectively (two birds with one stone).
Leverage their strengths while you lead them on their coaching and programming journey. Remember “it has always been, and it will always be about the athletes”! Are we brave enough to step back from our insecurities and let go of our egos for the benefit of our athletes? It’s ok not to know everything, in fact we can’t possibly know everything. We still have much to learn about the performing human. Even after thousands of years of training there are so many questions we still don’t have answers to. The best we can do is embrace technology and utilise the expertise around us to dive deeper and learn more about each athlete in our care.
Your learning will be far quicker nowadays with the advancement in FP technology. There is no reason you can’t be a relatively skilled user and interpreter of the information within a few months. FP companies like VALD now offer fantastic support and can be with you and assist you throughout your journey. What may be some level of embarrassment now, within weeks will be a thing of the past and you’ll be on your way to understanding your athletes better and making better decisions.
I wish you the best of luck embracing FP technology and starting your journey for the benefit of your athletes.