Feedback in Athletic Training
Feedback in Athletic Training
Athletes of all types find themselves training multiple times a week or even every day – either working on sport-specific improvements, like batting practice or film study, or developing their overall capacity for strength, speed, and endurance through strength and conditioning training.
Today, I want to focus on the feedback given during strength and conditioning training. It can be overlooked or deprioritized compared to the sport-specific feedback given to athletes of all ages. The feedback can come in many ways. Examples include calories burnt, heart rate, volume lifted, maximum amount lifted, top speed, pace, and relative rank compared to your teammates or peers.
Feedback in Strength & Conditioning
Feedback in the strength and conditioning setting is crucial to ensuring each athlete is motivated and working toward goals that are personalized and achievable. During the 2010s, when I was doing most of my athletic training, the primary measurement point was Test Day. Every 8-10 weeks, I would do one repetition max (1RM) testing for the major lifts: bench, back squat, and hang clean.
The reliability of a 1RM test is proven, although if a 1RM is taken as a single data point it is just a snapshot of the athlete's dynamic development journey. A rank ordered list of the top 1RMs is a compelling motivator for many athletes, but it doesn't tell the story of which athletes have improved the most, over- or under-performed relative to their bodyweight, or recently recovered from an injury.
Feedback Frequency
Feedback and its frequency lead to better near-term and long-term performance, not to mention the improvement in engagement from athletes. It is important to find opportunities to provide feedback each month, each week, and each training session. Providing this frequency of feedback can take a program to the next level.
Tully Improves the Feedback Process
Tully provides the systems to communicate all these forms of feedback to athletes with the same simple data. Tully provides 1RM tables that keep track of each athlete's current 1RM estimate, as well as their personal best. On top of that, each athlete is shown their trends – allowing them to understand their current performance in the context of their development journey.
We have also introduced a new model for feedback. The Tully Score. It is a single numeric score that summarizes an athletes objective performance and improvement relative to their bodyweight and their peers. In short, the Tully Score is designed as a tool for coaches to promote doing the little things correctly and encouraging buy-in at every training session.