Testing Why You Aren't “Explosive”: Diagnosing What Your Training Needs to Work On
Using a FV Profile method to discover your weaknesses and needs to continue getting more powerful and explosive without wasting your time
Contents:
Assessments recap
Force-Velocity Profiles
Determining Your Weaknesses
How to perform the test
How to interpret your test results
How to proceed forward and alter your training based on your profile
Strength & Power Assessments + FV Profile
To recap several previous discussions, we use specific test assessments of our strength, speed, power, mobility, etc. to find some objective measurements that provide insight into our physical capabilities as athletic performers. Whether you perform well or “poorly” on any given test should not be relevant to you outside of the personal insight it provides relative to your long-term goals.
For example, knowing *why* you are slow or *where* you are weak, etc. is central to making the correct training decisions required to make transformative physical changes.
Without specific indicative assessments, most athletes or enthusiasts would simply be left analyzing or intuitively guessing how strong they are in different categories. While general intuitive assessment can *sometimes* provide decent insight, as some general qualities can be quickly assessed without needing a detailed approach (I.e. a 6’ tall,130lb teenage male is certainly lacking strength for a power-based sport), it is much more difficult to identify the more subtle details that both tell a lot about the broader story AND are strong measurement indicators of progress in those qualities when working on them.
This post will go further into another testing modality which is related to the “force-velocity curve” and addressing your personal “force-velocity profile”. YOUR force-velocity profile is key for determining what qualities you need to focus on to produce MAXIMUM explosive power in an instant. If your goal involves hitting power, jump height, speed, etc - You will spin your wheels for years working in the wrong direction without this knowledge of yourself.
This test will again focus largely on the lower body (though it theoretically can be used for the upper body as well) because it is the lower limbs which produce the vast majority of our explosive power during any dynamic movement.
Some need to be reminded that even when an explosive “upper body” movement like a punch, push or throw occurs, that the power of that movement is cut by much more than half if the same athlete performed the movement seated, or lying down. A skinny person will very often be able to throw a harder punch standing than a large person will if restricted to a chair. This should inform those who are entirely focused on their upper body power development to direct their attention elsewhere if true, high impact ability, is something they want to develop. By getting the legs strong and explosive, they will generate the lion’s share of power for any punch, throw, or toss despite it appearing to be an “upper body dominant” movement.
Force-Velocity Curve / Profile Explained
If you have not already, you should become familiar with the FV curve itself and how it works/applies to you. For those that prefer listening, I explain it in this video below:
If you are reading instead, here is a summary:
Power is a relationship between force and velocity (speed). By applying more force OR more speed (assuming the other quality doesn’t decrease) you will apply more power. Most sport actions require a combination of speed and strength to various degrees which make most dynamic sports a function of power.
When performing exercises in the weight room or otherwise, they fall into various places on the “force velocity curve”. The curve demonstrates that as force outputs increase, speed decreases (more weight being overcome = more force but LESS speed) and vis versa for speed/velocity (as you move increasingly faster there is less weight to overcome).
Most actions fall somewhere in the middle of maximum strength and maximum speed.
(For those interested, *true* max force is actually a maximum effort isometric where the weight can’t even be moved but you make a maximum attempt at doing so, and *true* max velocity is moving your limbs at max speed with minimal to no weight added - i.e “flailing your arms” in the air or a sprint at top speed or jumps with assistance to “remove your bodyweight” from the effort.)
By increasing either force, velocity, or both - power potential in the athlete can/will be increased.
However, some athletes are spending their efforts on the wrong side of the equation (or avoiding the “center”, in some cases). This is because some athletes are lacking the ability to produce more overall power because they lack the maximum force ability (not strong enough), formally speaking, this is called being “force-deficient”. Other athletes are limiting their power development because they cannot contract their muscles *rapidly* enough, referred to as “velocity-deficient”. For those who are not particularly weak OR slow, it can be hard to know which end of the FV spectrum they are struggling with when it comes to jumping higher, running faster, & hitting harder.
Note: it is worth understanding that even if one is considered an overall “slow” sprinter → the *cause* of their overall slow sprint or change of direction speeds may not be because they have slow muscle contractions / elastic ability relative to their overall power. Instead you may just be too weak (or too fat) for your size in order to produce the force required to optimize power for your frame no matter how “fast” your muscle can contract. This confuses some people who aren’t fast sprinters believing the issue isn’t that they are weak but that they lack velocity potential. This is why performing an actual test is important because it’s easy for an undereducated trainee to get confused. The true cause of slow sprinting or low jumping can be either that the speed of contraction/elastic ability is lagging behind OR that the athlete isn’t strong enough yet. BOTH will cause vertical jump or speed to be limited and can be completely different in cause, even between two athletes with the exact same vertical jump/sprint times.
An example set of profiles below. Note that each of these athlete profiles could have the exact same vertical jump height → but 1 athlete generates the power to jump using the *speed* of his muscle contraction > strength. Another utilizes the total strength of his legs > how fast they can contract. And the other one Has a balanced ability to produce high force and do it quickly. (This is optimal in the long term)
Utilizing a proper test to give us some insight into whether you would benefit from emphasizing more max strength or increasing max speed by observing if you are likely more “force-deficient” or “velocity-deficient”. (It should be noted that the more advanced the athlete is, the harder it is to increase both speed and strength simultaneously, where a rank beginner can likely develop both quickly for the first 6+ months of proper training.)
This is where the following comes in:
FV Profile Testing & Determining Your Weaknesses
Below is a simple version of the test you can use at any gym to assess how your FV profile looks, and below that we will provide guidelines on how to interpret those results and where to restructure your training.