Pre-Season Testing

    Posted In: Blog Discussion

        • Keymaster
          Mike Young on September 16, 2008 at 3:13 am #14853

          Summer’s over. It’s Fall. On college campuses all across the country, pre-season track training has begun in earnest. And with pre-season training comes the battery of tests that most good coaches use to assess progress and program effectiveness and provide a competitive opportunity to athletes who might not otherwise compete for another 4-6 months. I personally love test week. In my setups,

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          ELITETRACK Founder

        • Member
          Beau Brehm on September 16, 2008 at 8:51 am #72382

          So the obvious question is what tests do you like to use for general purposes or for specific events?

        • Participant
          mortac8 on September 16, 2008 at 11:55 am #72384

          interesting blog. i would like to see the test numbers of some good people anonymously. i see a lot of inverse relationships between testing & track performance 🙂 i am talking about athlete to athlete. obviously testing improvements for a given athlete are a good sign.

          still providing workouts to Army… that will be interesting especially if/when they hire a coach of lesser qualification. when will they hire a replacement? why do so many teams wait so long to hire assistant coaches (or even sometimes leave the spot vacant)?

        • Participant
          BLogaN on September 17, 2008 at 1:47 am #72390

          Mike,

          How do you test your injured athletes? Do you try to tailor the test to particular cases, or do you not bother and wait until full recovery to get a more representative baseline? For example, would you test the vertical jump for someone with a shoulder injury?

        • Keymaster
          Mike Young on September 17, 2008 at 3:35 am #72392

          So the obvious question is what tests do you like to use for general purposes or for specific events?

          It really depends on the situation (facility and equipment availability), the sport / event, and any unique particulars about the athlete(s). As mentioned in the blog, I won’t even bother to test short sprints without a timing gate UNLESS we use a very specific video protocol that I can then use to get what are essentially electronic times.

          My most commonly used tests are 30m, SLJ, STJ, Squat and Clean however I have about 15 total tests that I use. The most I’ll throw in during one week is 10 tests.

          ELITETRACK Founder

        • Keymaster
          Mike Young on September 17, 2008 at 3:38 am #72393

          Mike,

          How do you test your injured athletes? Do you try to tailor the test to particular cases, or do you not bother and wait until full recovery to get a more representative baseline? For example, would you test the vertical jump for someone with a shoulder injury?

          It really depends on the injury and whether a substitute test can be used to give me a decent assessment of what I want to look at. I don’t test just for the sake of testing. In most cases athletes can do at least a couple of the tests. To specifically address your example, I probably wouldn’t have someone test VJ if they had a shoulder injury. Even with a touch mat (rather than a Vertec) I’ve seen athletes hurt their shoulders doing VJ tests due to the vigorous arm swing.

          ELITETRACK Founder

        • Keymaster
          Mike Young on September 17, 2008 at 3:45 am #72394

          interesting blog. i would like to see the test numbers of some good people anonymously. i see a lot of inverse relationships between testing & track performance 🙂 i am talking about athlete to athlete. obviously testing improvements for a given athlete are a good sign.

          Yeah I’ve noticed this too but not so much in my programs. I think it has to do a little with practice specificity. A lot of people have their athletes test activities that they never do in practice…and many times, even when they do do the activities they aren’t done with any intensity. I see this all the time with multi-throws tests. Also, I totally agree about the point about testing values being more valuable to compare within an athlete rather than across athletes. However I will say that generally my best test numbers (at least on my scored multi-event tests) always turn out to be the best ‘on the track’ performers.

          I’ve posted some elite testing data on here before but it was years ago. Anything in particular anybody wants to see. I’ve got stuff somewhere…just need to find it.

          still providing workouts to Army… that will be interesting especially if/when they hire a coach of lesser qualification. when will they hire a replacement? why do so many teams wait so long to hire assistant coaches (or even sometimes leave the spot vacant)?

          I don’t believe the new head coach arrives / starts until October 1 so it will probably be some time after that.

          ELITETRACK Founder

        • Participant
          Nick Newman on September 17, 2008 at 3:48 am #72395

          i also have lots of test date of Elite track athletes from the UK…

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