Data Insights on Athlete Performance - Highschool Football 📊 [Linebacker versus DB]

I'm excited to share some data insights on athlete performance that we've been tracking at HansenAthletics. We're diving into what demands are placed on athletes, the type of conditioning that's appropriate for their sport, and what's important for their position. I'll be comparing the data of a linebacker and a wide receiver/cornerback, highlighting their total distance covered, high-speed running, intensity, top speed, accelerations, decelerations, and more. This information will help us improve our training methods and make better decisions for our athletes.

From there, we shift gears to talk about optimizing conditioning for sport performance. How should athletes train to meet the specific demands of their position? What role does sprint training, acceleration and deceleration, and sled loads and sprints play? We get into the nitty-gritty of these methods, discussing how they can be incorporated into practice, how much volume is ideal, and the strategic importance of situational drills. 

Tune in to understand the science behind conditioning and learn how to leverage these insights to elevate athletic performance. No matter if you're a coach planning training or a player looking to up your game, there's something in here for you.

Chapters

• 0:27 Tracking Data for Athletes
• 15:25 Optimizing Conditioning for Sport Performance

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:27

Okay, what's up, guys?

Speaker 1: 0:29

So wanted to break this down. Obviously, there's a long way to go with starting to capturing this data and tracking what the athletes are doing on the field, but highly interested in getting some of this insights, not only to improve our training at hand athletics, but to improve the ability to reference to this stuff for coaches sport coaches when they are curious about. You know what demands are on the athletes, what type of conditioning should be appropriate for them in sport or for their sport, or even down to what's important for their position. So there's a lot of different things to look into this. Again, we're starting to dive into this new to the space in terms of actually tracking this and going through it. So take it for what it's worth, but I'm going to go through real quickly. Just two athletes we tracked on the same team during a football game last Friday, so they wore the GPS trackers underneath their pads and was able to grab some cool data on different positions. We're going to work through all the different position pools for football and also want to dive into some soccer as well, and then from there, the sky's the limit, right. So, number one I want to show you, guys, all the different types of data we're incorporating and what we're looking at and compare the two athletes. So you'll see here athlete one, which will go back and forth between these, but athlete one is a linebacker. So a linebacker kind of the head linebacker on the team plays an outside linebacker position. The second is going to be a receiver, slash corner DB, primarily DB, and also fills in, plays both sides of the ball, but a very interesting prospect for college football. He's going, has multiple offers already, but he plays defensive back mainly in those opportunities in the future.

Speaker 1: 2:30

So first off, let's kick back to the linebacker. Let's look at total volume during the full game. So you'll see here the athlete covered 2.77 miles. And then we got a bunch of different metrics here. So high speed running, hsr 369 yards this is going to be running. That is over, I believe, 13.1 miles per hour. So there's different things. You can set these different, but these are what's recommended for rugby or football, over 13.1 miles per hour.

Speaker 1: 3:01

You have the high speed running 369 yards. High intensity distance, that's 729 yards, and what's included in this is acceleration and deceleration. So the athlete quickly changing speeds, either accelerating or decelerating, so he almost doubles out when it comes down to the yards coverage while doing those two different types of movements. Total sprint distance this is going to be how far the athlete is sprinting, again over a certain miles per hour. I believe that this is around 10, 10 miles per hour. I think looking at that is 10 to 10.5 miles per hour. You got 332 total yards and so you'll see there's a little bit difference there between the sprint distance and the HSR. In terms of why that is relates to the fact that for sprinting distance to count you have to be sprinting for over a second. So the difference between, you see, between the high speed running, sprint distance is those high speed running yards can occur in a second or less when it comes to accelerating, decelerating or hitting a speed. So you see a little bit of difference in those.

Speaker 1: 4:16

What's cool about this software as well is you can see the numbers comparative half to half. So how much occurs during the first half? First, second half? You see there's more running total in the first half, a lot less high speed yards, but so you can just kind of compare and see what the demands are from half to half. So with that in mind, that is our linebacker when it comes to volume.

Speaker 1: 4:44

Let's pan over to our DB, slash wide receiver and you'll see 3.67 miles. So quite a bit more distance. Total distance covered high speed running 433,. High intensity distance 866 yards. Sprint distance 770. So see here, obviously, these positions, that's kind of something we'd already know, right Is? There's a big difference in how much yardage has to be covered for the athletes over the duration of the game, which can be taken into consideration when you're training different position groups, who obviously needs more conditioning although we'll dive into some things that I find at the end, but I think I can share a little bit of a way that I think that this can be obtained and it naturally is obtained through practice and through sport.

Speaker 1: 5:35

So pan back to the linebacker. We've got top speed. So you'll see here, in game, outside linebacker hit 19.34 miles per hour. That's pretty fast for a linebacker to hit in game. We have done a good job of getting our athletes fast. This individual, he's ran over 20 miles per hour in training. So giving the athlete the capability to hit those high speeds, have that speed reserve, able to hit 19.34 miles per hour in pads pretty comfortably while playing the game, which is well outside the range that sport is normally played at. So what you'll see is he's a playmaker that's able to get across the field and make plays that most linebackers would not be able to make because they don't have the ability to hit those speeds in pads.

Speaker 1: 6:22

So number of sprints 14 total sprints when it came to running full speed over a second 64 accelerations, 45 decelerations. So it gives us an idea of how much he's accelerating, decelerating, fairly balanced here as a linebacker and again just kind of proves the importance of working on deceleration in training. You can't just work on the accelerations as obviously there's a very significant demand on the decelerations as well. Pan over to wide receiver, slash corner 39 sprints, okay. So again he's doing almost more than double sprints than the linebacker throughout the session. But what's interesting is the acceleration and decelerations aren't too far off. You see, here accelerations are very similar but the corner wide receiver had to decelerate aggressively more often, which again makes sense, going into cuts, routes covering someone.

Speaker 1: 7:27

So just again pounds the importance of working on deceleration with your athletes, sport coaches on the field doing sprint work and requiring quick stops Again is going to be important. Also to know a lot of injuries happen in decelerations. So obviously there's a lot of opportunities to decelerate. If you are not working on that In practice, you're leaving your athlete open to more injuries. You know this can be implemented in strength and conditioning as well, when it comes to what kind of speed work you do in the gym and whatnot. But it's important to make sure that that bucket is being filled somewhere along the line.

Speaker 1: 8:08

Okay, and this is crazy right here, this 22.65. I know exactly what play this was on. I was at the game. It was a chase down from one side of the field to the opposite of the field, cap running down and catching another athlete I train that also Runs in that 22 mile per hour range. So this is insane. To hitting pads this is by far for sure NFL speed when it comes to the ability to accelerate and run in pads and make plays that otherwise would not be made. It can be a game changer and this is one of the reasons these highly sought after is. That is nutty. That is a crazy speed. I hope I want to get that across you. At 22.65 in pads is nutty.

Speaker 1: 8:52

Okay now, now we kind of hit that on the head, right, so we'll move on to intensity. It's more interesting data in this, especially when it comes to training. So distance per minute 40 yards. So in an entire minute on average the athlete's covering 40 yards in that minute span. But this is where it gets really interesting to and why a lot of conditioning by sport coaches in my mind isn't isn't quite done correctly.

Speaker 1: 9:21

High speed running per minute three yards. So he averages three yards per minute of high speed running. That's a lot lower than you would initially think. High intensity distance again, this is going to include deceleration, acceleration yards seven yards. All right, seven yards a minute. So Just take your brain to the idea that you're running gassers or slow volume conditioning. That is not the demands at all on the field, even for a corner or for a wide receiver, okay, and we'll get into that in a second. But as he has a linebacker, that's what he's kind of required to cover and might make you rethink some of the conditioning You're doing with the athletes.

Speaker 1: 10:07

And then the sprint distance per minute three yards, throughout the game. So 43, 73, jump over, boom. So here is your corner, slash wider, see ver. You'll see 57 yards compared to 40 yards and you'll see Four yards of high speed running. High intensity distance is eight yards. Sprint distance to seven. So again four, eight and seven, verse three, seven and three. Obviously a difference changes demands, but it is not as much as you would assume, right? So that's on average. That's how much yardage they're covering at certain speeds throughout the game, which just stresses the importance of being able to accelerate, decelerate and Run really fast, because you're not going to have a ton of time or opportunities To do so. So if you can capitalize on the those short yard burst, that's where you're gonna have the biggest payoff when it comes to performance on the field.

Speaker 1: 11:05

So, moving over to stress, this one's interesting. I didn't have heart rate on them, so we don't have heart rate, but let's talk about stress. So first off we're gonna look at step balance between feet 51, 49, fairly normal, especially coming like a linebacker coming out of certain positions anything over two to three Balance. So if there's a two to three differential, then you might want to start looking into. Is there some pain going on with the athlete? Have they had a previous injury that can be an indicator of Pass injury and potential injury in the future. So our linebacker right here fell right into kind of a healthy balance. Ideally it's 50 50 now, but not bad. Now we look at DSL. So real quick, I want to show you guys what DSL is and this is a stress score. So boom, dynamic stress load. Sorry, I'm totally pulling around.

Speaker 1: 12:01

So strain, the strain metric first amount external stress placed on the body during a during a given training or game. Strain can be placed on your body through step impacts during running and other game or training related activities. As you tire, your step impacts can become larger, placing extra stress on your body, resulting in a higher strain value. Running style, weight and the session type can all affect this score. Obviously, the session type was a game. It's a personalized metric. So as you track this over time you can kind of see if the athlete is inducing more strain on their body due to fatigue, which could be important in tracking for athletes throughout a season. You know if you were going to invest in these units as a team and be able to see what's happened to the athletes and the strain on the body.

Speaker 1: 12:46

But what's interesting is we just talked about how this linebacker covered less yards total distance, less total sprinting right, not as high of a total speed, but he has a dynamic strain load of 169. So that's his score. Obviously that number doesn't mean a lot to you, doesn't mean a lot to us yet either, until we kind of see more data come in on different games. Okay, but this is really interesting. So let's look at the DB. So stress again about the same balance again makes sense when you're coming off one foot in your starts or whatnot. But the dynamic strain load, even with more volume, more sprints and whatnot more distance covered was actually 131. So it's lower of a cost on this athlete than the linebacker. And again you got to look at athletes, body weight, right, and there's a lot of metrics that come into this. But obviously a linebacker, being heavier, is going to have a naturally a little bit more strain on the body. And then, as we get some data on linemen, it might be kind of surprising on how much strain it puts on them as well as they play being a very heavy athlete. Okay. So dynamic strain load lower, even though intensity, speed and volume were higher.

Speaker 1: 14:07

Now, to sum this all up, what do I take away of from this? As a coach Number one, I don't think a lot enough. I don't think enough. Football teams are doing true sprint training, so sprint really fast, short distances, rest, long periods Right, if they only need to cover seven, eight yards in a minute. Right, you're gonna need to be doing sprints and if they're running 20, 30 yards for their sprint, they should have a very long rest period two to three to four minutes between sprints.

Speaker 1: 14:40

Working on getting your athletes faster Again, if they can hit high speeds in the game, they're gonna have what's called I call speed reserves. So when, for example, kai runs 22.65 miles per hour super fast, it's very low intensity for him to run anywhere between 14 to 17 miles per hour, right. So he's gonna seem to be in better shape because those efforts are lower. So, even though he's playing at the game speed, the game feels slow to him, which is great for performance, obviously, and it's less of a toll on his body. So that higher speeds allow him more room to have less strain on the body playing the game at the speed it's played. So that's one takeaway.

Speaker 1: 15:25

I think we need more sprint training, short distances, long recoveries. I think we need to spend more time on acceleration and decelerations based on the volume of these in training, and I think we need to do sled loads and sled sprints and chain sprints in the strength and conditioning for these guys or on the field, as that is going to really impact their ability to accelerate and you'll see they do a ton of reps of that in the game. Number two is I think a lot of coaches are wasting time on slow moving general volume that's being accomplished in a game. Now this doesn't even take into account how much volume you're there putting on these athletes in practice. So you got to take practice into account, which we could get some data on that.

Speaker 1: 16:17

In my mind you don't want to be adding any extra distance to those practices than is necessary. So I think sport coaches would find the most benefit from conditioning being a format of drills actually playing the sport, so you can see how much volume they get in the sport in a game. Obviously, practice is going to be lower. Ideally practice is lower and that time at practice is spent more on the technical aspect and then playing situational, playing a two minute drill stuff like that, where athletes are getting reps in that are relative to the sport they're playing relative to football and you don't waste any extra time or beat up the athletes extra on conditioning. I don't think it's necessary. I think you just simulate the game in practice. You cut out all the conditioning and you add, in short, low volume, high intensity sprints and work those in throughout the week, based on when game day is, and get practice and volume there, as that's what they're going to be required to do, and again at very short distances, with long rest periods, and that's going to carry over more to what the demands are of the sport and what's going on on the field.

Speaker 1: 17:31

As we begin to look into this data. Obviously I'm going to get more and more and more of this, which will give us more clear insight, but I wanted to give you guys a look into what we found just from two games between positions the similarities, the differences and how we can do better as strength addition coaches and sport coaches when it comes to planning and implementation for our athletes. So thanks for tuning in, guys. It's a long video, a lot of information. Obviously, we'll get better at this as we track more, but if you guys have any questions, let me know. Definitely looking to take what we do at hand athletics to the next level, as well as provide our schools in the area a better opportunity and information to help them make decisions for the athletes, keep them healthy, keep them performing at a high level and providing opportunities for them on the field and also to go get schooling for free and attend colleges and whatnot. So thanks guys, have a good one.