Implementing Force Assessment In An English School Sport Setting

Having worked in a specialist college sport program for the last 10 years, I’ve been fortunate to work with fitness enthusiasts, weekend club players, and aspiring professional athletes. The nature of athletic development in a school sports program can be chaotic with a lot of moving parts, but thoroughly rewarding as the sports department staff can be at the center of the students’ sporting ecosystem. With additional academic, personal, work, and club sport commitments, it is extremely important to establish clear processes to ensure students are developing athletic qualities, and understanding of a healthy and active lifestyle, whilst mitigating any consequent injury risk due to high volumes of training across multiple commitments.   

A recent study into the holistic impact of a dedicated school sports program found that at the start of the academic year, school students were at risk of being physically ill-prepared and exposed to acute high training volumes, resulting in build-in fatigue (1). Second, during the school year, conflicting and demanding schedules led to physical overload, fatigue, and worst-case scenario injury.  

Methods for identifying the physical response of the neuromuscular system to this build-in fatigue are widely available, however, practitioners are advised to invest in technologies that don’t just give outcome data but give the “under the hood” information. The Hawkin Dynamics (HD) force plates excel at the ability to provide insight into adaptations of how students are producing force and can have a wide application to a school environment. An easy starting place to start is a simple B.R.I.E.F framework presented by Dr. John McMahon, Director of Research and Education at Hawkin Dynamics (HD).  

For the rest of this article, I’ll go through how this framework might be applied to your school sports program.   

Benchmarking  

Perhaps the most obvious starting point is the assessment of physical qualities, from the selection of tests below, this can be as comprehensive or as simple as you have resources for.  

As a singular performance coach, I needed a simple method that I could replicate with a large cohort (<250 academy students) to make comparisons across populations and subgroups and inform any training adaptation. The tests I chose were a countermovement jump (CMJ) and the 10-5 repeat hop test. If you want to be ahead of my starting point, make sure you download the HD Playbooks. This would have saved me a lot of time in standardizing the process and given me a deeper understanding of the parts of the CMJ! 

I chose these tests as they’re quick to implement, robust, and don’t add significantly more load or intensity to an already chaotic training week. Secondly, these tests give a measure of stretch-shortening cycle (SSC) muscle function for the slow and fast components. From this point, I chose a selection of Outcome, Driver, and Strategy (ODS) metrics that showed me HOW the student performed the jump. For a brilliant overview of the ODS system read Jason Lake’s overview on the HD Blog (Link).  

We are fortunate enough to have the capacity to assess linear speed alongside this using timing gates and as a proxy measure for maximal force production, dynamic traditional compound lifts are performed as part of the regular gym program. 

Return to play (RTP) 

As with pro-sport, the best attribute is availability. Both for skill development and competition, anecdotally having witnessed students lose valuable training time can also result in missing opportunities to progress in their sport. In addition, injury-free students are the happiest type!  

Using force plates as part of the RTP process in the CMJ and 10-5 repeat hop test gives you objective data in comparison to a pre-established baseline, the dual-sided nature of the HD system also gives you single limb contribution to bilateral tasks. As previously mentioned, the school sports staff can be at the center of the development pathway and communicate any objective landmark data to external stakeholders (club/international coaches or personal physios as well as parents). Single limb isometrics can also be used in this 1:1 process, where increased time can be spent with a more comprehensive assessment of force capabilities. Tests such as the kneeling isometric plantar flexion (2) and the 90:90 supine knee flexion assessment (3) could be used in common lower extremity injury rehabilitation. 

The addition of force plates means that the RTP process can be data-informed, not to be solely relied on but as a valid and reliable process to give everyone involved in the rehabilitation journey objective markers so that a successful return to training and/or competition can be made.  

Injury Risk Profiling 

The ability to “predict” injury I believe is a dangerous term that yet is not fully established in the literature. Suggesting a lower, higher, or less symmetrical score in a test will result in an injury is beyond the scope of this post, but I would suggest that force assessment can assess potential injury risk from a global perspective of robustness and demonstrate proficiency across various assessment protocols.  

An interesting concept that I would look to investigate further is the work of Dr. Jason Pedley whereby in the drop jump rebound, a risk profile of injury may be evident. This has the capacity to use data to improve our coaching of rebound jumps to avoid this risk profile during the training process, but also be part of a school’s initial testing battery to identify potential future risk of injury. 

A recent presentation on this topic by Dr. Pedley, delivered as part of our recent involvement in the continuing professional development of English rugby league staff, can be found here.  

Education (not exercise!!)  

So, this is my adaptation of the framework and for me, the hidden but impactful benefit of force assessment in a school setting.  

In a school, all student-facing staff have a responsibility to teach, in S&C we’re teaching students how to develop physical attributes in their context that we hope lead to a healthy active adult lifestyle (whilst hopefully improving capabilities).  

I’ve been able to use force-time data to start more in-depth conversations with students, discussing how performance on tests impacts their training. If an athlete’s modified reactive strength index is lower in the weekly CMJ and deeper analysis shows a longer time to take off (TTT) this prompts the discussion that they are using a longer strategy to perform the task. Data insights can then progress towards deeper understanding based on student discussion on recovery techniques, lifestyle adaptations on sleep, and how external training can influence their development process. With technologies that only give the output (jump height), this opportunity for deeper understanding might not be possible.  

Secondly, you have the potential to impact the wider curriculum. The HD system is based on Newtonian laws of motion, could you offer to embed the technology with the science or maths departments to make theoretical learning more applied? It gives you the opportunity to embed English and Maths into your session (if your coaching is observed based on this criteria) and, again, an opportunity to teach how it impacts performance.  Our academic provision spans the wide scope of Further and Higher Education sport qualifications. Finding opportunities for more academic use leads to a learning tool being optimally used, and something that is well used in schools is easily justified. 

Fatigue Monitoring   

So as identified earlier, fatigue build-up in the school sports athlete is a key consideration for managing load, reducing injury risk, and maintaining athletic development trajectory. The two tests I use can independently be used to monitor fatigue (4), however, in conjunction they can be used to see which of the SSC functions is susceptible to increases in load. Based on the timings and logistics of testing, this could then inform skills training sessions, a practice that is common in professional sport. However, if done routinely (weekly / 2x a week) over a term you will gain knowledge on how students adapted to the program in place. This will not only help the following term but in addition, allow you to reflect and adapt the training process for the same term in the next academic year.  

A suggested schedule for monitoring fatigue is outlined below. This will be unique to every school, separate sport, or individual, but providing it is consistent throughout the year, monitoring performance will give longitudinal insight into how students are adapting throughout the development process.  

Force assessment in the training week.  

S&C = strength and conditioning, MD = match day 

This schedule is a typical week, whereby we assess “readiness” on a Monday and Friday for the following reasons:  

Monday: Provides our best opportunity where students are most likely to have a day's rest (Sunday) following Saturday club fixtures. This gives us a marker of response to weekend fixtures and sets the tone for the week. We can adapt the week if needed in terms of a planned load or intensity.  

Friday: This allows us to review the impact of the week’s training and for those who are playing at a weekend, educate them on adapting minutes (if possible) or as a prompt to send extra resources on recovery and/or nutrition to support.  

This has helped us develop our S&C structure, where our Monday session becomes about adaptation, whereas the Friday is about movement quality and restoration.  

I hope this article provides a starting point and a rationale for the implementation of force assessment in a school sport setting and I’d welcome any future discussion to see how the HD system can be implemented into your setting.  

References  

1 – Thompson, F., Rongen, F., Cowburn, I. and Till, K., 2024. A Longitudinal Mixed Methods Case Study Investigation of the Academic, Athletic, Psychosocial and Psychological Impacts of Being of a Sport School Student Athlete. Sports Medicine, pp.1-29. 

2 - McMahon, J.J., Ripley, N.J., Comfort, P., Robles-Palazón, F.J., Fahey, J.T., Badby, A.J. and Bramah, C., 2023. The Kneeling Isometric Plantar Flexor Test: Preliminary Reliability and Feasibility in Professional Youth Football. Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology, 8(4), p.164. 

3 - Ripley, N.J., Fahey, J., Cuthbert, M., McMahon, J.J. and Comfort, P., 2023. Rapid force generation during unilateral isometric hamstring assessment: reliability and relationship to maximal force. Sports biomechanics, pp.1-12. 

4 - Philipp, N.M., Nijem, R.M., Cabarkapa, D., Hollwedel, C.M. and Fry, A.C., 2024. Investigating the stretch-shortening cycle fatigue response to a high-intensity stressful phase of training in collegiate men's basketball. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 6, p.1377528.