How Embedded Testing is Changing How We Monitor Performance

The NFL Combine is one of the most well-known testing days. Players are able to showcase their athleticism in front of a global audience, increasing their chances of being drafted.

The combine has grown to the point where companies and coaches now offer exclusive training plans, camps, and programmes aimed specifically towards improving combine performance. Despite this, with the exception of sprint testing for running backs, research has revealed no consistent statistical association between combine tests and professional football performance (1).

When we take a step back and look at our job description as Strength and Conditioning coaches, it will say something like "to prepare the athlete to meet and exceed the demands of the sport and training." So, is it truly in an athlete's best interest to focus so much on one specific testing day? Sure, the combine may make a difference in terms of exposing you to more individuals. However, I do not believe that testing days are as important in most team sports, especially for youth and novice athletes.

Additionally, scheduling testing days can be difficult, especially for teams with large squads. This can have an impact on a test's reliability and validity. For example, after a day's rest, you may run your preseason testing first thing on Monday morning. It may be difficult to recreate this scenario throughout the season. Niggles and injuries will occur, as will games and rescheduled fixtures, technical and tactical training, and team rotations. The solution? Embedded testing.

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What is Embedded Testing?

Embedded testing is a form of monitoring that does not require specific testing days; instead, it tracks performance throughout training in order to identify general performance trends. This allows you to complete an entire block of training without enduring unnecessary physical and mental fatigue. This method of performance monitoring also allows you to make more precise adjustments from session to session while also gauging overall progress. In fact, by regularly monitoring performance, you can determine whether the progress over the training block was a significant adaptation or merely a daily/weekly fluctuation.

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Practical Examples

We now have an understanding of what embedded testing is, the challenge now is to know what to track, how to track it and why. As with all things strength and conditioning, the question can be answered with "it depends". Your desired outcomes from the training block will direct what you track and how.

Strength Adaptation

If you want to increase the amount of force your athletes can produce, you have two options: top set load or estimated 1 rep max. Top set load is very basic and does not require any math. Simply Keep track of the weight your athlete uses for the top set of each exercise, each session. You will eventually be able to distinguish between fluctuations and meaningful change. Unfortunately, this gives us no idea of the actual maximum capacity, only working loads. Calculating your estimated 1 rep max from working sets, on the other hand, can give a good indication of what that max might be.

I have found The Brzycki (1993) equation to be the most useful for calculating an estimated 1 rep max.

Estimated 1 Rep Max = Weight ÷ (1.0278 -(0.0278 × Reps))

I have also seen this method used semi frequently. Essentially, every four to six weeks, an athlete will complete AMRAP as their final working set. From this an estimated 1RM is calculated, from which training percentages are adjusted accordingly for the next block.

Power Adaptation

Simply put, you will put your athlete

through a jump test every time they enter the gym. It is entirely up to you which jumps test(s) you use and which metric you track.

If you want to improve your athletes' ability to generate force quickly, having them perform two to three jumps at the beginning of a session will give you an immediate indication of how they are doing. But what if their score drops? This is another advantage of using jump tests, they are an excellent indicator of how tired an athlete is.

In the scenario that you are able to test them everyday, you will be able to establish daily fluctuations and standard variations across a week. From here, you can calculate whether or not a significant increase has been made over an entire training block. Let's look at the following example:

• Athlete 1 scores an average of 36.7 cm in week 1

  • Their standard deviation is 1.27 cm

• Athlete 1 then scores an average of 39.2 cm for week 6

Worthwhile change is generally regarded as any change of 1 standard deviation above or below the original score. Knowing that the average was 36.7, we can add 1.27 to make 37.97. Therefore, we can conclude that Athlete 1 made a meaningful increase as their new score of 39.2 is higher than 37.97.

Work Capacity Adaptation

Particularly with novice lifters, I have found calculating volume load very useful. Volume load simply refers to the amount of external loading applied to the athlete. This is typically calculated in the weight room as Reps*Sets*Load (see the example below). While this is an important metric to monitor, work capacity is more often associated with field or pitch-based training, especially in team sports. When tracking pitch-based volume loads, total meters or meters above certain thresholds can be used. GPS units are most commonly used to record these metrics.

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Final Thoughts

To be perfectly honest, I still occasionally run specific testing sessions. However, the more I coach, the more I understand how to record various metrics and how to build testing into our programmes, the less I see a need for them.

Why waste time and effort, while the chances you have to allow your athletes to train, when you don't need to?! As with everything though, make sure you have a clear understanding oh what, why and how you are going to track performance before you start. Staring at a huge sheet of data and not knowing what to do with it is a horrible feeling!

1. Kuzmits, F. E., & Adams, A. J. (2008). The NFL combine: does it predict performance in the National Football League?. Journal of strength and conditioning research, 22(6), 1721–1727