Often times athletes being competitive expect a linear progression of change. Many want immediate gratification of improvement. 

To properly establish buy in it is important that we communicate with athletes the expected time frames and consistency it takes to see results with VBT.  

It takes approximately 4 weeks or longer to see progression from an athlete.

The reason progress takes multiple weeks is due to the autoregulatory component. Daily and weekly fluctuations will occur.

 However looking at the velocity of the movement over a period of time will be the most accurate representation of an athlete’s improvement. 

Often the first time an athlete sees their numbers regress they may become frustrated or start to question their development. 

If the athlete understands the basic concepts surrounding auto-regulation we can avoid frustration and maintain buy-in which is key to long term development of any athlete.

When deadlifting there is a method that many athletes will use called “Tap and Go”.

This means between each rep the athlete taps the weight to the floor and executes the next rep. 

Some athletes when doing this will demonstrate fluctuations from rep 1 when they must move from a dead stop position to rep 2 where they can tap and go between reps to gain momentum into the second rep. 

We have observed this in a handful of our athletes and had to coach them on either resetting between each rep or monitoring their tap and go method for discrepancies in the data. 

It is important to note that some athletes do not present fluctuations in their tap and go method. For these athletes no further coaching is necessary. 

An example of this is an athlete that executes a set containing the following velocities…

 

Rep 1- .6m/s

Rep 2- .8m/s

Rep 3- .8m/s

 

In Rep 1 this athlete executed this deadlift from a dead stop position. 

Using the tap and go method this athlete was able to create some momentum and elevate his velocity. 

The elevated velocity is not an accurate representation of this athlete’s strength level ultimately resulting in higher readings through rep 2 and 3. 

For this athlete we would coach them to reset after each rep then monitor the change in velocity. 

Eccerentics are a great training tool. Traditional coaches use time as the metric for prescribing the eccentric phase of the lift.

The Speed4Lifts system has a setting that tracks both the concentric and eccentric portions of a lift.

Using the feature will allow a coach to prescribe an objective measurement for eccentrics. This can be done by telling the athlete to not exceed.3m/s on the way down. This will hold the athlete accountable for doing the exercise correctly. 

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We want to take a moment and thank Speed4Lifts for their sponsorship of this unit. Speed4Lifts has been an industry leader in VBT. Throughout this section we will highlight this technology to aid in the education of Velocity Based Training.