Inside the Numbers

So and so benched 350 pounds, ran a 4.8 Forty and can squat 450 pounds. I hear this all the time. What do those numbers mean? Obviously this individual is fairly strong or is he? He is not fast or is he? My point here is that just seeing a number on a test result is not very revealing of the underlying qualities that enabled the athlete to achieve those performances. On the lifts it could have been a very, very slow movement, but he still got the bar up. On the Forty he could have run a great ten yard and then completely fallen apart. If we are going to test and then spout numbers we need to get inside the numbers and really find out how the athlete achieved those numbers. We also need to that in order to be able to guide the athlete to further improvement. Don’t think of testing, think of evaluation. Think of it as an ongoing process. I conceptualize each evaluation with an athlete as an attempt to profile that athletes physical qualities. I want to then correlate the evaluation with performance. For example that is why looking at splits in a sprint test are so important. It can enable me to identify strengths and weakness by comparing the various zones. That is also why vertical jump tests need to be done with some sort of contact mat system. The standard jump and reach only gives an absolute number. There is no flight time or contact time, in short nothing that tells me how the athlete achieved the height. It is more work, but it enables you to really focus in on what needs to be done to make the athlete better.