Jump testing: Looking at metrics that matter and learning from some of the best jumpers in the world with Eric Leidersdorf

Right now we're not confident linking too many metrics from jump variables or jump base variables to this decelerative property. But I think the concept itself is really strong and one that warrants fleshing out, which is why we're going to pursue it. Right, understanding how some of these jump parameters are just, you know, more simpler, more attainable lab based measures relate to maybe a more field based test like the ADA. And ultimately what we'd like to take this one is kind of understanding how those same, uh, accelerative or desalered of metrics relate to on court principles as well. So, you know, accelerometer or kind of gyroscope data. Welcome to the pace of performance podcast, the podcast that dives into the philosophies ideas and practices of some of the best practitioners in high performance spot. Today on the pace performance podcasts, we have Eric Leiderstorf, who is director of biomechanics at P3. P3 are a private organization based in Santa Barbara, but also have a facility in Atlanta, which is where I spoke to Eric from today. And anyone that's interested in jump training and basketball and jump training will know of P3. So they test and train athletes from all over the world. I found out in this discussion here today, including some youth athletes in the German national team, but predominantly basketball athletes and it's jump testing and training that I wanted wanted to dive in with Eric today. So we got a real insight into the learnings, funny stories and experiences of testing some of the best jump athletes in the world in the NBA. So if you are using jump testing, whether it be daily monitoring or whether it be just jump testing to see the improvements in various different metrics with your athletes. This episode is going to give you an insight into why we use jump training in the first place and some of the key metrics that we can use to give us an insight into our athletes physical performance. So over to Eric, I hope you enjoyed this episode. This episode of the P3 performance podcast is sponsored by Kitman Labs. Kitman Labs is sports first technology company to offer a complete solution that includes innovative analytics and advanced athlete management platform that is supported by a team of sports, technology and data science experts with over 200 years experience. Kitman Labs is leading the evolution of sports performance, partnering with over 150 elite teams across the NFL NHL MLB AFL EPL and championship rugby through advanced statistical analysis rigorous scientific research and unparalleled industry experience. They've architected the world's only analytics platform that helps sports teams to truly harness their data and uncover the influences behind performance optimization and injury risk. To find out more about Kitman Labs, visit KitmanLabs.com or follow them on social media at Kitman Labs. And also sponge on this episode is Samsung Equipment. Samsung Equipment has been manufacturing elite strength equipment since 1976. Based in New Mexico, Samsung provides professional weight room solutions for those looking to lead the way in advancing our strength and conditioning profession. Being direct manufacturer, the team at Samsung brings fully customisation capabilities in not only branding, but in custom equipment needed to execute your programming. The Samsung team brings many years of experience not only in coaching, but in manufacturing high quality strength equipment, so there is no vision to great. If you can dream it, they can build it. Find them on social media at Samsung_EQ and for more information, visit the website, SamsungEquipment.com or email Andy at [email protected]. And this episode is also sponsored by Hocken Dynamics. Hocken Dynamics is the world's first wireless force plate testing system. The Hocken Dynamics system is built for coaches to test in the real world, not just in the lab. Capture reliable data on all your athletes in a matter of minutes and monitor their progress in the cloud from anywhere in the world. The Hocken Dynamics force plates are wireless, portable and trusted by teams every level of sport. Integrating force plates into your athlete monitoring program has never been easier or more affordable. If you want to see the Hocken Dynamics force plate system in action, head over to their website HockenDynamics.com to schedule a demo or for them on Twitter at HockenDynamics. So now further ado, over to the episode with Eric. Eric Leider's Dough, welcome to the Pacey Performance podcast. It's great to have you. Thank you. It's great to be here. No, thank you very much. I must say, got to thank Luke Starrie for the introduction. There's always an introduction behind every guest. And when it says solid is what Luke provided, I need to say thank you. So I really appreciate you coming on mate. Of course, as much as it pains me to thank Luke as well, I will do so. So thanks to both of you guys, I appreciate it. I'm the excited to be here. You've had some great guests to this point and I'm looking forward to selling that reputation. No, absolutely, absolutely. And it doesn't know who you are, Eric. Would you mind just giving us a bit of background on you? What are you doing now? What you've done previously? You got a bit of a different, different background that are traditional, let me say. Sure. So yeah, I'm currently the director of Biomechanics at P3. So we were based out of Santa Barbara, California. We've got a couple of facilities, one in Atlanta, Georgia as well, which I meant, which is where I am now. But I've been at P3 for about 10 and a half years at this point. And over the course of that time of really worked with our biomechanics team to oversee our assessment process going through everything from data collection acquisition on through any ultimate analytics projects that we run. So in school, I studied biomechanical engineering. It's an undergraduate. Masters in applied analytics, we're getting a little more stats heavy with some of the work that we're doing. But having been at P3 for, you know, for that decade plus a lot of my time spent, you know, working in basketball, you know, American football, world football, baseball, number of sports where you have the good force to work with. Super interesting. So I mean, was it a true guessing it wasn't a traditional pathway into the into the role you are now, but was was getting involved in sport always the I was something that was a passion of yours from the biomechanical engineering, you still thought that the path may lead to sport or not all. Yeah, I mean, I grew up just loving sport right and playing every sport and I never at a high level, but grew up loving it. You always had some kind of aptitude for math or physics in that direction as well. But I'd say biomechanics is something that I really sort of stumbled across. Yeah, I think I initially went to university with, you know, thoughts of being, you know, any other type of engineer, frankly. And, you know, between switching majors more than a handful of times between, you know, pre-med and, you know, electrical engineering sort of found my way, you know, after a couple of winding years to, you know, to the biomechanics track. And I think P3, when I ultimately found my way, my way there, I think it was a great kind of opportunity for me to apply a lot of what I learned in undergrad, you know, as a kind of as a biomechanics student. But there were some really, you know, impressive tools, this private facility and they had some, you know, really impressive athletes who, you know, were, you know, I was fortunate to use to be able to study. You know, a lot of things that we'd learned about in school. So it was a great opportunity. I was very fortunate to kind of stumble upon that role. In the US, in sports like basketball, like baseball, a specific biomechanics roles becoming more popular, whether, whether employing someone directly for that area. Yeah, I think so. So, you know, particularly in a sport like baseball, I know that they're, you know, at the highest level and major league baseball. I'd say every team or close to it has at least one kind of biomechanics staff member as a part of their part of their sports science team or performance team. And in other sports, I think it's becoming increasingly more popular. But in baseball, you know, especially as it's really sort of gravitated towards a more analytic centric approach to the game. It's becoming much more popular position. It's becoming cool. There are same biomechanics. It's going to be cool. You might, but you might be the only one at this point. Yeah. That's right. Right. Let's dive into the into the stuff that you do on a day-to-day basis, or P3, doing a day-to-day basis. And that's that's around jumping jump testing, jump training, etc. With some of the athletes that you work with. And one thing that I want to drag it right back. We're talking a lot about jump testing. And I spoke to Jason Lake, um, four or five years ago on this as well. And he's like, there's all this jump testing going on. But why do we think the jump to then infer things from a different, indifferent dynamic actions, etc. So I'm going to bring that back to you. Why do we assess jumps and what can that? What's the basis that gives us? It's, I mean, it's a great question. And I think I think the answer depends a bit depending on the sport that you're working with. So there are certain sports like basketball, like volleyball, very jumping intensive sports where maybe there are some pretty straightforward links between the jumps that you'll study on force plates or with motion capture and ultimately certain strategies or things that are used on court. But for other sports, right, the footballs, the baseballs of the world. You know, I think when we use jump testing, we're using it more generally to assess physical qualities that have implications with respect to training. So certain work that we can do in the weight room or on the pitch that ultimately is going to relate to, you know, back to some qualities that are going to be beneficial for the athletes. So in certain respects, and frankly, the sports that we work most closely with, which is which is basketball at p3. You know, there are some very direct or almost linear links between jump testing that we can do and some leaps that we can make to outcomes that occur on court. But for certain other sports, I think it's important to know that we're dealing with a slightly abstracted view of what that jump testing tells us force production at various phases of the movement. You know, that will have some implication, you know, down the road to some work we can do in the training environment. Would that be way off in thinking this is maybe my steps and book would every way off in thinking that people just take it as given that jump testing is the way to go to make those linear links to other performance outcomes. I mean, I think that's fair. I think it's fair just because it's been so commonplace, right. And sometimes I think we confuse gold standard for just most common and jumps are relatively easy to study, right. Yeah, when you talk or when we think about, you know, particularly different force play technologies that have become much more ubiquitous in the past, I don't know, five years, you know, last five to 10 years, give or take. Yeah, I think the ability to study jumps has become much easier or much, you know, much more accessible. I guess there's maybe a better way to put it. And you know, from that when people have information, they're going to try and understand and that's where some of those links start to start to be made. But yeah, I think a lot of that just has to do with kind of the ease of kind of data collection, I suppose, which is, which has improved considerably. Yeah, I think to some extent we saw a similar trend when it comes to load monitoring or GPS tracking, you know, as that becomes more popular, you know, I think the line between gold standard and, you know, very common, you know, starts to get blurred a little bit. So, please, me on to my next question, what, what solid, yeah, solid, links can we make between metrics that we can collect on a force play, for example, and things that happen on car or on field. Yeah, I think the, the answer is it depends to some extent, right? You know, a lot of it depends on how kind of how certain you are in some of those findings. When it comes to, you know, I would say generally speaking, there's been a lot of research applied to linking, you know, jumping or jump strategies to kind of accelerated properties, right when we think about more linear sprinting. I think, yeah, there have been kind of a number of papers sort of linking those, those two outcomes, I suppose, and, damning Harper as well as, you know, kind of brought deceleration to the forefront, or, you know, especially starting to popularize it a bit more as well. And I think there are certainly some links between certain jump measures and decelerate of ability here to here too. You know, so I think there's certainly some degree of, there's certainly some degree of certainty that you can probably apply to, I don't know, non jumping actions that you can get a, you know, fingerprint on or sort of link back to some jump outcomes, but, you know, you're always going to get a bit more granularity if you study the movement itself probably assuming the technology is in a place where you can get get good data on it. And that's probably where the interest in discussion comes with deceleration, because I was speaking to Damien and a few others last week, although it before around the technology available to assess deceleration and how hard that actually is because there's so many moving parts and how you actually standardize it the test available, etc, etc, which maybe links back to why people are trying to use force use jumping and force plates to try to infer deceleration qualities. If you try to do that, what kind of metrics are we actually interested in when it comes to that link? Well, sorry, sorry, when it comes to links between the kind of jumper can route jump studies to decelerate properties exactly. Yeah, you know, I, well, good question. And it's one that I think we're hoping to shed a bit more light on here moving forward. So we're actually using or kind of adapting some of Damien's work and studying some kind of ADA principles in our basketball athletes at P3 again much shorter court than some of the other other sports as well. And the distances are going to be a little bit different, but Jake Raus, who's a member of our team is going to use this project for his PhD process. So it's something we've been piloting, I'd say, for about the past 18 months. And right now, I don't think what work right now we're not confident linking too many metrics from jump variables or jump base variables to this decelerate property. I think the concept itself is really strong and one that warrants fleshing out, which is why we're going to pursue it. Right, understanding how some of these jump parameters are just, you know, more simpler and more attainable lab based measures relate to maybe a more field based test like the ADA. So we'd like to take this one is kind of understanding how those same accelerative or desalertive metrics relate to on court principles as well. So, you know, accelerometer or kind of gyroscope data collected from athletes going through drills that start to stress these, you know, these these abrupt changes the direction as well is really where we want to start to start to understand these links. Because right now I would say for the work that we've done internally are most interesting examples kind of live with the outliers right they live with the you know the guys who sort of like well exceed the norm. But when it comes to understanding the property as a whole, I don't know that that's something we have really clear inside on yet. Yeah, one thing that I think is really exciting and just going through your Twitter feed like I do before. Well, P3's Twitter I was going to say hopefully not mine there's not much there yeah well I went through a little look at yours and P3 let me to P3 and then just even going back three for four years looking at some of the internal work that's been going on and you sharing them, I think as a private organization. That's really exciting because you have the ability to do that and to kind of open the door on what you do and it always excites me especially with the podcast but with the articles and people have done internal studies and gone this is what we found this is on our cohort it's not going to go in a publish journal ever. I'm happy to talk about either a podcast or an article for me that is absolute gold and that's the kind of thing that you are doing daily you know with you and your staff yeah well sure well I you know I I appreciate it and I have P3 we appreciate that sentiment I think you know again you know being in the private sector I think it's important for us to. To show some degree of yeah not some degree hopefully show kind of you know as much transparency as we can with respect to the numbers that we collect any implications of you know that data for training outcomes or for just general decision making and I think yeah it's something that's you know kind of important quality for you know for for P3 to carry moving forward you know we do have a goal moving ahead as well to start putting some of our more you know what we think of as foundational. Findings in literature as well so we are kind of trying to tip toe through the you know the publication process but not we've yeah I think we've been able you know we've been very fortunate to learn some really interesting things by asking good questions and ultimately we want to start to you know we want to we want to share you know that doesn't do us a whole lot of good to just just sit on. I mean I know how protective organizations are about the data that gets shared how because you're you're coaching and testing athletes that aren't yours and like an organization has a contract with an athlete how difficult is that for you to share those kind of things as a private organization. I guess it depends so in certain instances that you know a lot of it like anything else is relationship driven right so if there's good transparency particularly between the organization and the athlete which isn't always the case you know that makes things much simpler right but there are certainly instances where you know we have to make sure we can work to effectively communicate the things that we've found to the athlete or to their support staff whether that's personally you know for their kind of off season support staff or with the team. That they're you know that they're a part of so we do our best it's certainly by not a one size fits all approach when it comes to when it comes to that sort of thing. Just moving on to the assessment tools that we have available to us obviously we many of us and the people listening have used a just jump and then moved on to I don't know Pasco for splits reasonable price and then on to them are parking dynamics etc. But now we've got things like Michael's motion capture which I spoke to like I mentioned to be for speaking to people and FL because they've been given like a diary system yes yes yeah yeah you've got you've got systems like that how reliable I mean just go on the mark on the Michael's systems what where we at with understanding what they can do what they can give us reliability wise etc. We're getting there. So I think, so we've used a semi-motion capture system for the past 10 or so years, give or take. And so we've run a number of validation studies looking at our more traditional marker-based approach to the the markerless system with semi- and also some competitors too. And I think the short answer is right now, I would say the marker-based model is generally a bit more reliable when it comes to looking at some of these more granular measures of biomechanics. But there are certainly some real logistical benefits to a marker-based system when it comes to post-processing time, which almost doesn't exist or can be shortened considerably relative to a marker-based system. And then, especially in a team environment where time is of the essence. At P3, we're fortunate to have a great staff of biomext to help crunch the numbers, whereas if you can get a system to do that for you, it certainly saves you some logistical headache in that sense. So in general, I think it's getting there. And we've seen kind of notable improvements in markerless motion capture capabilities. But you're certainly not quite hitting the same gold standard, I think that you're getting from a marker-based motion capture system, or at least one that we've been kind of accustomed to working with, I guess, going back to our conversation at the start, is more common, golden standard. Where is the line between those two? So in general, I'd be surprised if we didn't see continued improvements with respect to markerless motion capture. I think it's certainly coming. And at some point, we're going to have to make a choice between-- we're just going to have to make a decision on how good is good enough. And when markerless gets to a point where it's good enough, I think it's going to make sense to jump into that with two feet. What's the price implications for markerless versus marker systems? General ballpark. Good question. I don't know. All right, I guess I don't know well. I know. I'm in-- There are markerless systems that kind of run the game. It can have even some groups are trying to use the iPhone one or two to try and capture some of these measures. And others are-- we use a eight-camera marker-based motion capture setup that's just more traditional, lab-based system. As far as the price differences are concerned, I'm not certain. But that is something I should probably figure out. I'll report back. No, no, that was fine. I was just seeing if you knew, but that's not safe. No problem. I'm going to ask you a big question now. And anyone that's discussing-- Anyone who haven't had an on-the-who discussing fast plates and jump testing, et cetera. What metrics actually matter? Because any system that you're going to get, you're going to be like a similar to a GPS system. You're going to be throwing lots of different metrics. Yes, some may be displayed on a particular dashboard that make it easy for the user and try to simplify things. But in a day, you're going to have lots of options. So what options actually matter? The unfortunate answer is probably that it depends. It kind of depends what matters to you. So if you're a sport coach and something matters to you, it's probably my role or anyone's role as a sports science practitioner to find some measures that reliably, repeatedly assess what that quality is. And of course, correct or inform as needed. But I think that the short answer is probably that it depends on what quality we're discussing. So when we think about our traditional vertical plan indicators, when we're talking about a can of movement jump or a depth jump or squat jump, anything along those lines, I think we've seen, based on our studies that we've run in house, one that we published. And that there are a series of force time curve measures and motion capture markers that are generally important for athletes who want to improve their vertical displacement if that's something that matters to you. But we also spend a lot of our time studying movement in the lateral plane, particularly in basketball, where a lot of defensive actions per side to side. And those performance determining factors are a completely different set than the factors that drive you vertically. And so I think depending on the qualities that we're trying to study or improve for an athlete, what the metrics that matter are a bit variable themselves. So vertical displacement want to get people jumping higher. If that's the aim, are there any particular metrics, like you mentioned about the study, that you would gravitate towards or encourage fields to gravitate towards? Sure. I guess the first thing I would encourage is generally study the athletes that you're working with. I think that research is fantastic. And it really has a place in our landscape. But for the athletes that you're working with, I think it's important to study them because they're going to be a unique subset relative to the population at large, I suppose. There are some classic Newtonian physics that influence us all that are probably worth combating. But in the paper that you're referencing, we're really looking at different-- I will call them eccentric phase strategies and how ultimately how those related to jump performance in an NDA population. We broke out these different sets of clusters or groups or types of mover. Ultimately, we saw that they all had a few shared characteristics regardless of how that jump was executed. So we have some athletes who love going through range, we have some athletes who absolutely despise it, and we have some athletes who really only go through any range at the hip. So depending on those three groups, I think what we saw from that research was there are still a core set of four factors that drive vertical displacement for all of them that was relative concentric force output. It was knee extension velocity and acceleration, and then just generally being shorter. Now that we can change that much, but general height play to roll in there as well. But those factors, regardless of the jump style, tended to impact vertical displacement. When we look at it through some linear regression models that we ran, but there are also some secondary factors. For all these groups, that if you're really trying to tune or optimize performance for an athlete in that group, those may warrant a little more attention at that point. But those four, I'd say, were the big ones that we found from that study. - Just reminders of the fall again? - The four. So knee extension velocity and acceleration, concentric force output, so force generated during the concentric phase relative to mass, and then height as well. So generally shorter athletes are jump and higher. - Yeah. That's combining some of the motion capture data and the false plate data. - Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So for that one, we're looking at a full set of kinetic and kinematic measures from both force plates and motion capture that, yeah, essentially that would help us identify and look at jump displacements across a few different styles in our population. - So for the lateral aspect, you said it was obviously important for a basketball athlete. - Sure. - Anything different there? - Yes. - That's right. - Yeah, yeah. So I think the short version, right, is if we see generally kind of an emphasis on variables across the knee, right, for vertical movements, right, for the knee extension velocity or knee extension acceleration, a lot of measures that we're seeing impact lateral plane, movement, whether that's lateral acceleration or performance in like a change of direction environment, we're seeing a lot more variables pop up around the hip, right? So generally having a well functioning hip joint tends to be a really important quality here, hip extension velocity, hip abduction, just simply range in that sense. These are factors that tend to drive athletes side to side or at least our most effective lateral plane athletes side to side. And so, yeah, I think it's just interesting, right, when you start to think about maybe how versatile a force plate or a force plate in motion capture can be, you're going to deal with different sets of kind of performance parameters depending on what the quality is that you're trying to assess in that sense. Yeah. How much is limb length and segment differs? How does that affect things? I mean, it definitely does, especially when you deal with guys like we see who are humongous. Yeah, they're by and large, they're big. And so it certainly plays a role. And so I think, you know, the same premise that I would encourage to study the athletes that you're working with, when we're looking at guys, I think as our sample size, it's bigger. You have the luxury of kind of whittling down or kind of like, I would say narrowing the scope of athletes that you can use within each individual cohort. And so, in basketball, rather than just looking at, you know, all athletes that we've assessed right all of 800 guys who play in the NBA, we're just going to look at athletes, you know, guys who play, you know, in the four or five, right? You know, generally our bigger athletes, or we're going to look at our wing players or our guards. So you can, the more that you can start to, I suppose, narrow the scope right of the athletes that you're looking at. Maybe we get a bit more like for like comparisons that tends to account for some of those limb length discrepancies because Yeah, we have Guys who differ by you know more than a foot in height plan in the NBA. That's just that's just reality So we're just gonna take a very quick break in this chat with Eric help you in join part one So part two is all about the training and then look into the future of sports science and how that's gonna impact p3 And how that's gonna impact the practitioners across the world who are testing and trying to get a deep insight Into their athletes capabilities. So part two coming up This episode of the page of performance podcast is sponsored by hi tro Have you tried hi tro the wearable blood flow restriction solution? There's unlocking better recovery in athletes While many have used bf r for rehab Hi tro are demonstrating the huge impact bf r can have on recovery and performance When used for post exercise recovery Through their innovative design bf r straps are integrating into shorts and t-shirts Allowing bf r to be delivered to groups of athletes safely and more conveniently than ever before Check them out at hi tro.com or email Warren at hi tro.com to find out how hi tro can give your athletes a competitive edge And this episode of the podcast is also sponsored by iMajorU iMajorU is used by leading sports practitioners and biomechanics researchers worldwide To capture and compare multi-limm inertial data in the field iMU step from iMajorU is a dual sensor and at lower limb load monitoring tool Which helps practitioners optimize return to play for running base sports iMajorU have just released their new and improved waterproof sensor blue trident Which includes ultra high g k abilities to quantify high impact steps such as cutting landing and sprinting Longer life battery to collect data all day real-time feedback to aid immediate interventions and faster workflow so practitioners can review long train sessions within minutes of training completion iMajorU now part of vicon works with military pro and collegiate coaches and athletes from around the world Including the austrian institute at sport the u.s department of defense and collegiate and pro teams from around the world If you want to get to know more about iMajorU head over to their website iMajorU.com I'll fall them on twitter or instagram at iMajorU And now back to the episode with Eric I'm just thinking of obviously that you're working with Basketball players whose job it is to jump like that's what that's what they do um In various different Various different Yeah, but obviously when when when i'm playing football as a central defender i used to play try try to play football as a central defender My job was to jump and head it and obviously win the ball in the air Which didn't happen as much as the basketball jumps and whatnot But it was still super super important that was my job What can we learn what could i have learned or what kind of football or anyone that in various different sports Which is not particularly a jumping sport but requires jumping What can we learn from the kind of insights that you get from from these Basketball beasts Yeah, you know, I think That's a good question I would say i mean football is interesting in its own in its own right And I think some of it goes back to what we were speaking about earlier on in our conversation where There are some links you can make from jump testing to Accelerative or deselerative properties or things that you're going to have to perform on on pitch right big accelerations big deselerations There are links that you'd probably lean into there. So if i'm a you know if i'm a practitioner I think there are i don't know there's good Information to be taken from the jump test that we can at least associate a plausible mechanism for some application behind what we're going to do in a in a training environment But yeah, I would say Football is one of the more interesting sports out there not to totally latch onto that and dive in here But um, I think just before COVID We did a little uh like a very small Pilot project with the folks from the DFB at the German national team, but you know, it's some of their kind of like younger Yeah, it was you 15 you 16 So sent all of our equipment out to out to them and assessed. Yeah, I think Yeah, you know, it was for some camp they had with their under 15 under 16 national team and I think um, you know Ultimately, right the the the thing that got to be very interesting, right they have a very distinctive um Playing style or responsibilities for each position on the pitch and so ultimately being able to map things from an in lab assessment to qualities that are going to be valued on the pitch I think is a very um, I don't know Interesting question to try and tackle, right? That's where maybe you know forceplader motion Capture studies can step maybe just beyond a training environment, right? There's you know, there's there's data for action, but then there's data for insight as well And when you're trying to identify if a player has the tools for a job, right? If he's going to be able to tap into the losses that he needs to be a wide player or if he's going to be like you and just be a central defender You know being a lump and you know head and balls away Um, I think yeah, those are yeah, I think those are those are qualities that you can tap into on the um, yeah on the the biomechanics side that will start to inform um, you know some of the decision making process in that direction So I'm fortunate. I think that you know the we've you know that that COVID sort of yeah Knip that project in the butt a little you know a little prematurely, but um, I still think there are some real there's some real value to um, you know, even just You know from a from a plausible mechanism perspective understanding how qualities that you assess You know in a biomechanics environment have implications for actions that occur, you know on court on pitch Yeah, wherever So in terms of German young German national team youngsters they were providing or they were Saying okay wingers they have a particular set of skills. These are them. We need to assess them and it want to assess them in a in a lab-based setting with false plates and Motion capture and that was up to you to devise the test that was going to try to inform whether they Were in a position to be able to do that or not? Yeah, and I think um yeah, that was the the basic the basic premise um Yeah, those those those the basic premise. I think um yeah, and yeah, look It got not to take this a direction where we don't need to go but also you know when it comes to um You know, we're talking a bit about some cluster analysis. We did it with the canary jump paper when we start to think about Different ways that we can sort of group athletes again. I think that has maybe Less uh, it's maybe less actionable, but can be fairly insightful right? It's it's a really um, you know Clustering for those who who don't know is it it's an unsupervised machine learning technique Which just means that there objectively is no right answer right the right answer is whatever you think kind of fits your data the best But it takes kind of gives you the ability to match Yeah, I kind of match the the coaches eye with a more technical quantitative process which together can be pretty pretty powerful Right, if you can bring you know, folks on on both sides of the table together in that sense. It can be a pretty powerful tool and Yeah, ultimately we're you know what what the goal was with with this sort of project was to see um, you know, can we Identify groups of athletes here with respect to um, you know with the goal of kind of optimizing Uh, talent identification writer. Yeah, I'm kind of optimizing improving right? Yeah, are there qualities that we should be Studying for or developing at a younger age to hopefully hit on a higher number of prospects Ultimately breaking through to the to the senior team which admittedly is a you know, it is a pretty small Small number I think for for every country at this point. Of course. Um, just development is a is a tricky is a tricky beast But um, but ultimately right the you know kind of that clustering concept of saying hey, you know of these athletes that we assess You know, you've get you got kind of forward distinct kind of groups of movers um You know, what are the qualities that we can learn from these guys? What do you see from these guys on field that um, you know, might shed a little more light on What we're seeing from from these athletes? Interesting my last question on the the testing side things yep favorite funny marble moments From testing Some of the best jumpers in the world um gosh, I I'm gonna start with a you know a really corny answer and just say it's you know Working with really impressive athletes isn't something. Yeah, that that shine doesn't ever really go away Um, right. Yeah, when you still when you see some athletes move right um, and especially when you see some guys just You know fight gravity like they do Um, it's it still takes your breath away and in that sense it's always been kind of very rewarding um, you know at the same time I I don't know I think the the you know same a reason that we're all drawn to sport to some respect or just the the personalities Right, we're dealing with the 1% of the 1% with respect to what a human body can do and it's just I it's just it's always really fun in in that regard. So um, yeah, I think that's kind of where I would start But uh as far as you know more specifics are concerned um Whoves let's see uh I've put it on this point. Yeah, sorry. I look I I'm gonna have to think of a good answer Or someone's gonna have to chime in and let me know which uh Which uh, which uh, which what I should remember But no, I think I, yeah, that. I think that's probably where I leave it also if you want to cut that part feel free. No, that's fine. I just completely bottled that one. No, that's fine. Not a problem. I dropped that on you there. So let's move into the training side of things. And you mentioned throughout this around moving strategy. And I wanted to understand from you, when you get to know what strategies and group in these strategies, how training is affected based on those and if it actually is. Yeah. So the short answer is that it is. Yeah, it certainly is. I think when we go through our assessment, the general process, when an athlete comes to one of our facilities, whether it's out in Santa Barbara here in Atlanta, when an athlete goes through that process, day one they spend, how we're going to have to two hours with myself or someone else on our team, arguably the worst two hours of their life. Right, just hang it out with us for 90 minutes or more. Right, going through their assessment, everything from injury history and mobility screen information, just simple range of, you know, range of motion through the ankles through the hip, etc. All the way through kind of their full sort of 3D motion capture assessment as well. And so ultimately at the end of the goal, well, ultimately at the end of the day, here we go. The goal is to have a very detailed understanding of this athlete's mechanical makeup and the way that we've gone through and done that at P3 is we know it started with a conversation with our coaches about, you know, identifying a needs list or a set of training targets for, you know, for all of our athletes. Right, so we have a set of training targets that, you know, I think, yeah, essentially that we've identified over the course of the last, you know, 12, it's since before I joined P3, frankly, you know, that our job on the biomechanics staff has been to, you know, really ascribe quantitative data that we can put to each of these particular, you know, targets, right, whether that's hip stability or ankle mobility or, yeah, active deceleration, right, you know, like an ankle stiffness property. So our job has been to go through, has been to go through and identify which markers we can, you know, from our motion capture and force play testing, we can use to essentially monitor each of these, each of these targets, right, and, you know, by virtue of, you know, testing as many athletes as we have, I think we just crossed 1300 professional basketball players and, you know, been to a number of other sports as well, you know, by kind of going through this process for as long as we have, you start to get some contextual understanding of what good, bad, and averages. And so when we start with this understanding, when the data comes back to us, following an assessment, ultimately we're able to do is say, you know, these are the kind of four areas where this athlete falls notably below, you know, the mean or below where we'd like to see them, relative to other athletes in their sport or in their position. And to that end, you know, these are going to be the training targets that fall out, fall out of it. And, you know, kind of by virtue of taking that approach, that was also very long with an answer. I apologize. By virtue of taking that approach to what we can start to do is if we're saying, hey, these are the four kind of like real critical targets we want to address over this next training block, we can follow those, you know, by the time we go through that next reassessment, which, you know, depending on how long the athletes with us, you know, we'd like to give, you know, six to eight weeks, at least to let some adaptation set, you know, take place before we reassess and see how we've moved the needle on those properties. But our coaches have done a really good job of trying to close that loop right go from, you know, the assessment data where we're essentially saying, hey, here are the qualities that we think need some work. And ultimately kind of testing and tinkering with strategies to try and address those specific targets before we retest the athlete. And so that's been very much a team effort right at at P3 to try and, yeah, to try and really close the loop on how we're, I guess, assessing and then sort of impacting an athlete's development. Across the 1300R, how many tests that you've done, athletes you've tested, is it easy to book these into certain, put these into certain categories? If so, is there like, I know this is trying to simplify it, sorry. No, no, into like, like we can we can do these down to like four areas, at least we can say, okay, this guy or this girl, we think fits in this book. Normally, this is the strategy we'd go to based on their movement strategy. And then obviously individual tweaks happen. But is it is that able to be done? So it is, I would say, you know, in general, our approach is to take a little more, or is to apply a little more specificity to it. So we try, I think for the athletes who are training with us, we try and avoid bucketing, we try and have, you know, it's kind of been owned, you know, each athlete gets their own individualized workout for each day. And our coaches do a, you know, do a really good job of making sure that they're, yeah, kind of staying on top of updating these programs as we go. So the short version is for the athletes who are training with us in house, whether you're a pro or an amateur, yeah, do you kind of have your own specifically individualized workout each day. And by virtue of being a, you know, a private facility and operating as we do, that's something we're able to, yeah, it's something that we're able to to put in place. But, you know, when we do work with teams, like we do have some collegiate teams or, you know, some other teams who come in and see us for, you know, for a block. And this is, you know, probably something, you know, a problem that a number of folks have tried to tackle to this point. When you're dealing with a kind of a team schedule, that bucketing approach is the one that we try and we try and go to. So, you know, it'll still go through that same assessment, but we'll try and, you know, essentially cluster the needs for, you know, for all the athletes who go through the assessments. We can say, yeah, we've got our, you know, again, making this up, hips ability and ankle stiffness group. We've got our, you know, hamstring mobility and whatever other group. You know, it's something we can start to apply a bit more specificity, which that without marching all the way down that kind of individualized direction, which admittedly is very tough to administer on a on a team wide level. So when it comes to movement strategy for counter-moving jump, for example, you mentioned right at the start, getting vertical displacement from more hip flexion. When you're looking at them kind of movement strategies for just for a counter-moving jump, don't know if you've got an example in your head. I'm just, I'm just wanting to try, try and get from, okay, this person's a that type of jumper, therefore the training may look a little bit more like this or that jump was in this area and therefore this changes a little bit. Yeah, is that so? Is that possible? Yes, you know, I think that, I think that's the right premise. I also prefaced this by saying, I'm probably the wrong person. Okay. I, you know, I just to shout them out real quick, John Flake and Jack Anderson are coaches in Santa Barbara and they do a fantastic job of, you know, again, just applying that process to, to how we go through our training. And yeah, I think we want to be as diligent detailed in collecting the, you know, the data that we that we do and these guys do, they do a great job when it comes to, yeah, when it comes to like applying their SNC know how to that information. And, you know, collectively as a group, we're trying to tighten the screw on how we can understand how each of these individual parameters can change with training, but for the specifics of that answer, I would defer to to them. They are, yeah, they're going to be, they're going to be the source there. Okay, sweet, like it. So when it comes to, I've put in that, I'll read out what I actually put in here, was training, I think, so require lateral excellence. And that was obviously based on reading your, some of your work going through P3 stuff, but also links back to what you said before around, obviously, differences in metrics, if we're looking for vertical or we're looking for lateral. Yep. So how is, and you may defer, you may defer back to the guys again, and please, please feel free to do that, but how does training differ when it comes to vertical versus lateral? I know I've gone to the testing, but training will be called. Sure. Well, yeah, I can talk to it, or I can speak to it, you know, topically, I suppose. So, yeah, I think kind of going back to an interpretation of our findings from that research, right? We would say, you know, generally there are kind of more knee-dominant parameters that tend to impact our vertical plane aptitude, then there are some more hip-dominant parameters that have a greater impact on our lateral movement ability. And so, to it, if we're taking a basketball prospect and we see that they struggle in one area, but excelling in another, really what we'll start to do is tinker with, yeah, kind of tinker with some of the ways that we're going to load them up. So we'll think about, for an athlete who struggles laterally, we'll think about maybe a slightly heavier dose of maybe, you know, hinge-oriented or hip-dominant movements as opposed to an athlete who struggles vertically, where we might tip the balance a little bit more in favor of some kind of more knee-dominant work as well for them. Now, that's also if all we're thinking about is optimizing lateral movement or jump height, when of course, we want to take into account everything else, right? Yeah, yeah, any other training targets that they possess, but generally speaking, yeah, those are those are the ways that we'd start to tinker with an athlete's program when they come through to try and hone in on, you know, kind of shoring up that deficit. Cool. Excellent. Did that answer it at all? It does, no, 100% day. All right. - Okay. - Nailed it, nailed it, no need to defer, no need to do it. (laughs) Right, I'm gonna seal this out for the next 10 minutes. And I think this would be really interesting coming from you in your background and the kind of organization that you're a part of. And this is the future of sports science. So where sports science is going in the future? Obviously we've talked about a mini-school piece of that, moving from marker system, three motion capture system to Michael Luss. And that's obviously just talking about technology. So I'd love to get your take on the future of sports science and the future of sports science when it comes to tech. - Yeah, it's a big topic. - Absolutely. - In 10 minutes you said? - Yeah, we can push this well. - Alright, let's see how we do. I, you know, I, so in general, I would say, I, you know, where sports science is going is probably an effort to blur the line between what happens in the lab and what happens on the field or court, right? I think already in, you know, in baseball, right, in MLB and also in the NBA, you're seeing optical tracking systems, right? Start to, you know, be installed in stadiums. And these are systems that can start to give you a lot of the same information without making judgment on the quality of the data yet. But they're gonna give you the same sort of information that you can get from a gold standard 3D motion capture lab, you know, anywhere in the world. So ultimately, I think, right, because optical tracking is going to be, you know, playing much more, I don't know, central role in like, or sorry, it's gonna occupy a lot of the data, you know, a lot of the data that teams are gonna start collecting. I think we're really gonna see a trend pushed in that direction, right? Now, there are still a series of questions that needs to be asked in the way of accuracy of those systems. But I, again, I don't see the accuracy getting any worse if anything they're gonna continually get better, right? With that comes a whole different set of considerations, right? You know, things like how you classify what movements are actually being conducted, you know, on field. When we study jump, we know it's a CMJ, or we know it's a, you know, a depth jump. We know what it is, right? We start to think about actions that happen on court. You know, I think that clarity goes out the window a little bit just because, you know, the nature of sport is so kind of fluid and dynamic. But yeah, I think really you're gonna start to see the line start to blur between things that happen in the lab and things that happen on court. - Yeah. I was actually having a discussion today, our little chat today with someone around LIDAR. Is that something that you've come across? And yeah. - I taught it like a bit, no experience with it, but yeah, I mean, in concept, yes. - Okay. - Yeah. Is that something that you see? The reason I mentioned it is because the guy I spoke into was gonna go through a reliability study with a particular company who were actually in organizations now, but kind of keeping things on the, on the, - Sure. - Down, because of that. So yeah, it was just to get your take on whether it was gonna be something that was gonna be more shout out about, I guess. - Yeah, I mean, I think so. I think we're probably gonna go through a phase where, we're probably gonna go through a phase where there's a lot of experimentation with different means of collecting the same or similar data, but all sort of focused on actions that happened on court. Right, a few years ago, the NBA, right, installed, you know, second spectrum, or you know, I just had cameras installed to be able to track, you know, slightly more in depth on court stats. And I think the next progression again, is some of this skeletal modeling that we're, that we're starting to see, but whether it's that or that, I think ultimately we're gonna start to see a number of efforts to start to quantify actions that occur on court. And you know, not too dissimilar from how, again, GPS tracking exploded once upon a time. Now, I think the next question off that, it's one thing to be able to collect a lot of data. It's another thing to figure out and understand it. And I think that's where, you know, the groups or the teams that can really understand that information first, you are definitely gonna win the first few battles, right? As for, you know, the war, who knows at this point? I think that's too early, too early to call, but, but yeah, I think we're probably in for, you know, a bit of a wild ride with respect to just the sheer kind of volume of options available to us. - Yeah, so for, for an organization who were very well known for jump testing, and obviously using false plates to be able to do that, is there not looking at alternatives? But is there any, what's the future of jump testing itself? Is it still false plates? Is it something else? - You know, I think there are probably different steps that we can, you know, that we can march along, I think, first, you know, for our kind of personal next steps, I think we're gonna start to, or our goals are to start to install technology with some of our team partners, right? So install false plates and motion capture in a, you know, in a manner where we can start to automate the processing and collection of a lot of that information, still in a lab setting, but with an eye toward using data that's collected in a lab to understand things on court, right? So when you see a jump on court, ultimately, can we relate that back to mechanics over seeing in a much more controlled, ideally more confound free environment? So I think that's kind of our next step is to try and facilitate kind of that more, I don't know, granular, biomechanical data collection in the performance space with some of our team partners. But, you know, beyond that, I think, no, I think a lot of the real, I don't know, a lot of the real big steps with respect to jump testing are going to be finding ways to believe those findings to what happens on court or on field or wherever it is that you're playing. So, you know, even, you know, this is very, you know, superficial, I would say at this point, but even with the, you know, kind of the clusters that we identified for different can-room and jump strategy, what we started to do was overlay some, you know, parameters as it relates to performance on court. So whether that's block percentage, so percentage of shots that an athlete, you know, blocks while they're on the court, or rebound percentage, or, you know, kind of how an athlete performs during certain, like, time stress instances, you started to see some real significant differences between athletes in different clusters in these various performance categories, right? So, you know, not surprisingly, right? The athletes who didn't need to go through much range to be able to achieve a good jump height, those are the guys who tended to excel with respect to block rates or rebounding rates, you know, things that ultimately are going to impact life on court, strengthening those connections, right? Through kind of continued study and then, you know, again, the, sort of the explosion in on court tracking, I think is going to be, you know, really important next few steps for us. - And I guess them kind of links that you mentioned to start the other ones that are going to get the coaches super, super interested. - I mean, that's the hope, right? That's the hope, I think, you know, they're like, look, strength work and training athletes is supremely valuable and I don't think, yeah, I don't think anyone who will, at least who listens to this podcast would argue otherwise. But, you know, the extent to which, you know, we can all start to show some additional value beyond the weight room or beyond the gym and impact things that are going to be important to position coaches, whether that's certain responsibilities that athletes gonna have on court or whether that's, yeah, kind of certain performance outcomes or, you know, kind of various, like injury outcomes as well. The more that we can start to draw links between what happens in the gym or in the lab, things that happen on court, I think the better we're all gonna be, better we'll all be for it. - Hey, here, right. I'm gonna ask you where people can find out more about the work that you do at P3. I know you seem slightly embarrassed about your Twitter account. (laughing) I'm gonna ask you about your Twitter account. Yeah, what your Twitter account, P3, where can people find out what you're going on? - Sure, so, yeah, my Twitter handle is at Liderstorf, my last name, which, you know, not the easiest last name in the world, but, you know, you can only work for your given. So, I think it was a resolution for 2022 to be a bit more active on Twitter, have not done that one. So, you know, maybe 2023's the year. - The year? - I think so, we'll see. But, yeah, so that's for myself. And then, you know, for P3, you know, at P3 Sports Science is where you can find sort of our, our company's handle at that point. And, you know, not to take this as an opportunity to sort of plug the rest of the team, but we've got a, like, a really fantastic group that we're working with right now. And I would, you know, I think they're all kind of worth a shout whether it's on Twitter or on social. Really thoughtful group, really smart. You have some guys kind of bleeding the, you know, the line between biomechanics and coaching as well. So, we've got a great team between, you know, John and Jack, who I mentioned, Trent Reeves and Jake Rosh on the biomechanics team at Santa Barbara, Leah Borke and here in Atlanta. We've got a really strong group in that regard. So, yeah, I also want to make sure they get their due here, not to drag this on too late. - No, absolutely not, 100%. Thank you for that. Right, Eric, I'm going to let you go, but thank you very much for the last hour. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you very much for your openness and your insights. And look forward to it. keep in touch and chat and see you soon. Yeah, likewise, thanks for having me. Cheers, Eric. Awesome. Thanks. [MUSIC] Thanks to you and into episode 402 of the Pace of Performance podcast. Big thanks to Eric for giving up his time and fitting me in the diary while he was in there at Lanter Facility. And also big thanks to our sponsors of this episode today, Harkim Dynamics. I measure you, Kipman Labs, Samson and Hydro. The podcast couldn't run, it couldn't form without these guys. So I really do appreciate all their support. Big thanks to you for tuning in. Hope you got lots from this episode, which is I did. And look forward to chatting to you next week. [MUSIC]