How to Apply If You Don’t Have Force Plates

Although I would love to give you one size fits all program, I think this would be disingenuous. I can however, highlight some principles that will get your gears churning so you can evaluate your current programs and possibly offer recommendations.

View The World Through Impulse Lenses

Whether you’re watching sport or training, apply what you now know about impulse (peak force, time & RFD). How are the actions being performed? Are the movements…

• Accelerating quickly or against resistance (high force)

• Occurring over a large range of motion (time)

• Performed rapidly (Rate of Force Development)

If there are specific qualities that occur frequently in sport, it may be appropriate to include exercises that enhance these qualities in training.

Examples

• Hockey requires a mix of skating strides. Acceleration requires short, explosive bursts while top speeds require long pushes where the skater fully extends through his hips and knees.

• 100m Sprinters get out of the starting blocks using long, rapid and forceful pushes followed by incredibly forceful and rapid strides where contact time needs to be minimal to avoid undesirable “braking”.

Training for both of these athletes may have overlap in exercise selection in the gym focusing on large range of motion, concentric only exercises (i.e. box step-up jumps, non-countermovement jumps) and rapid plyometric movements (i.e sprints, bounds & hops).

Consider The Phases Related to Each Skill

As highlighted in Daniel Bove’s book “Take-Off” section, movements can be broken down into different phases. Some sports may favor or fully omit certain phases.

Examples

• Football linemen start each play in a squat position, rapidly exploding into the other teams line. This movement relies on the propulsion phase without the need for unweighting or braking.

• Basketball players will use a variety of strategies depending on their position. Jump balls and rebounding may require propulsive only or even a multi-rebound (quick repeat jumps) strategy whereas a jump shot will follow the traditional countermovement jump strategy.

You may choose to program exercises that develop all phases or just one specific phase of a movement under various conditions

• Light & fast (Band Accelerated Jumps, Jump Rope

• Heavy & slow (Hang Clean, TB Jumps)

• Partial or full range of motion (Half Squats, Overcoming ISO’s)

Unweighting

The first thing you’ll want to do here is make sure the athlete is able to comfortably get in and out of the desired position. Often it’s a Assessing the athletes movement This includes;

• Flexibility : Do the structures have the ability to lengthen to full range of motion under passive loading. If not, some positional stretches and isometrics should do the trick.

• Motor Control : If an athlete can get into a position passively, next you’ll want to see if they can perform the movement under variable conditions; slow/fast, light/heavy. You will have a better idea of their muscles ability to contract and relax at the appropriate time and sequence joint movements.

Some exercises that I like to use to teach and train the unweighting phase

Goblet Squat

Seated Breathing

Braking

A few sources I’ve come across dislike the term “absorbing” force or “eccentric loading” because although they simplify the concept and paint a picture, it’s another example of everyday language not aligning with the mechanical or kinesthetic terminology. To keep it simple, this phase requires rapidly producing force to slow a movement down to either a complete stop or initiate the stretch shortening cycle (SSC). This occurs in a variety of different ways :

• Change-of-Direction (cutting, decelerating and landing)

• Initiating and Receiving Contact (hockey, lacrosse, & football)

• Stretch Shortening Cycle (jump & sprints)

Here we can use different tempos as well as ‘fast force’ exercises from Hunter Eisenhower’s Force System.

Depth Drops

Hurdle Jumps

Drop Squats

Eccentric Deadlifts & Squats

Propulsion

The most common phase has a lot of great options to choose from. The key here is to strategize how you’re going to periodize loads and joint angles to produce the idea result when it matters most. Remember, you’re trying to manipulate the impulse curve using the three factors at your disposal (peak force, time & RFD). I’ll offer some helpful guidelines to follow if you don’t have force plates.

• Peak Force : Moderate loads moved quickly

• Time : Heavier loads (VBT), accommodating resistance (chains/bands), larger ranges of motion

• Rate of Force Development : Body weight or elastic assisted (overspeed)

I prefer to identify which strategy is needed most for their sport and aim to build up to these qualities as we get closer to the season or competition. For instance, our...

• Gymnasts will perform heavy loaded jumps (2-DB Jumps, 2-DB Rebound Jumps & conventional strength) during the summer when they’re furthest from the season and work up to low volume movements that accentuate rate of force development (band assisted jumps, depth drop jumps, plyometric hops) during competition season.

• Our football players will do heavy olympic lifts, squats and deadlifts during the winter and spring months and transition to fast lifts, curved sprints and change of direction drills over the summer months before training camp.