JC's Musings

Strength & Power Testing Easy! Not Really.

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Do you believe to manage something, you need to measure and monitor it? I've just finished writing a module on strength and power assessment and want to share some reflections. Assessing the strength of athletes you work with is one of the most fundamental skills we need to master and would seem a relatively simple task. However, there is quite a bit to capturing data that is accurate and reliable.

To collect strength and power data that shows change in your athlete’s performance is due to your training and programming, rather than other uncontrolled factors, requires you to understand and control for a number of factors. I can think of at least 10 such factors, a couple I will share with you in ensuing posts e.g. diurnal variation. But before that, being inconsistent with anyone of these factors can lead to changes in your testing data independent of performance changes, rendering it difficult or impossible to determine if there have been any “real” changes in your athletes or players. I see so many people get this wrong and you know that the changes they are proclaiming are not based on good practice, and as a result interpret their claims with caution.