Athletic Performance Podcast
The Athletic Performance Podcast: we discuss all things performance-related, with a focus on pushing the boundaries of speed, power, and strength.
Athletic Performance Podcast
014 - Drake Berberet on Using Dual Force Plate Systems to Profile & Monitor Athletes
Drake brings over ten years of experience working with athletes from youth to professional levels. He has worked with business executives and athletes in all major US sporting organizations to provide data-driven insights for performance, health, and longevity. Drake currently serves as the VP of Performance & Brand at Hawkin Dynamics, and previously held roles as Director of Sport Science and Content Manager over a six year period. Before joining Hawkin Dynamics, Drake worked as the Applied Sport Scientist for the University of Illinois Men’s & Women’s Basketball teams. He holds a masters in Exercise Physiology & Nutrition, and is currently pursuing his PhD in force plates through the University of Salford (UK). Beyond his academic pursuits, Drake has garnered substantial experience in business through his tenure as a small business owner. His consulting and advising company, Strength 2 Speed LLC, bridges the gap between human performance and technological solutions for sports, health, and fitness companies.
Here's a quick overview of our show:
✅ The 6 phases of the countermovement jump and what they tell you
✅ Profiling athletes by the shape of their force time curve
✅ Measuring high RFD in the drop jump versus the countermovement rebound jump
✅ Metrics worth using for monitoring athlete recovery and performance
✅ ..and much, much more
To follow Drake on the socials, please visit his instagram @strength2.speed or his Twitter/X at @dberb23 Please follow us on instagram @athleticperformancepod for more content and solutions to this podcast.
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I want to interrupt you before this podcast starts, we do have a little bit of audio that comes out scratchy. I promise it clears up as you go. So sorry for the interruption and don't let it deter you from all the great information inside this podcast. Thank you.
Ryan Patrick:All right, Drake, welcome to the show, man. I appreciate you carving out the time today. I know you got a busy schedule. You got a lot of irons in the fire, but for people who don't know you, can you start by telling everyone just a little bit about yourself?
Drake Berberet:Yeah, thanks for having me, Ryan. I've been trying to do this for a little bit, so it's good to be here on this podcast now. Yeah, my name is Drake. I work for Hawken Dynamics, do a lot of things within performance. Uh, brand outreach, education, just getting people force plates and helping them use it better. Um, and that's really our entire premise here at Hawken as well. So I've been here for really a part of the company for about six years. Um, I was a customer first. I was, uh, recently at University of Illinois basketball, um, before Hawken Dynamics. So we bought the force plates there. Uh, we were one of the, we were one of the first Hawken users, but I think one of the first, Really Forceplate users to use the Forceplates a little differently, not just for Hawking Dynamics, but at all the brands that existed. Um, we tested the guys about 285 or 86 times a year. Um, that would be days, that would be multiple attempts for each day. Uh, but we really, we used them to their full effect of being truly portable and wireless and, uh, before people were just kind of, you know, collecting once a week, once a month, every now and then. So they, they looked at Forceplates in a different lens. Adam Fletcher is really. Pivotal, um, a change in my mindset to, hey, these things could be used a lot more than they should be. So we traveled with them, tested guys on the core, tested them every single time they had practice. Um, we'll just do soft tissue massage work on them, test them on the plates before, test them after, basically just looking at changes, right? So, um, we were one of the first to do that. So I just had a lot of reps with force plates. That was one time in Illinois. And even before that, I worked at a few different spots. I started out as a strength conditioning coach. I've been in the private sector, division two, um, I was helping out at a D3 school up here my first couple of years at Hawkins. So I did like data analytics, um, for that school. Throughout that time, I've owned a gym as well, owned a gym for three years. Uh, sold that about a year ago. You're you're in a few months from today. Um, we're in a power. We're in a power washing business for six years when I was younger. So kind of got some some business experience there. Um, have like a consulting company straight to speed. So that that really started out as like all my training when I was a straight coach in the private sector in division two and just trying to make some extra side cash. Merged into, like, data analytics consulting for, for companies or, like, organizations that need more advanced stuff. And then now it's honestly just kind of like an advising, like, uh, kind of catch all. So I help out some, some different types of people, um, that are in, like, fitness, health and wellness space and just help them with their companies if they're getting started. But, yeah, like, 120 percent of my time is really spent talking about and just making making this thing go or anything attached to it. So, yeah, that's a little bit about my background.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, that's it. Huh?
Drake Berberet:Yeah, that's all.
Ryan Patrick:Jay, your resume is super impressive and, you know, I've got a lot of professional peers and mentors that I look to and I know a lot of them. Look to you when they're starting to ask questions about force plates, and they're getting into this. And, um, I've heard several other of your podcasts. You know, I've heard you on Eric Cressy, Hawken Dynamics, had their own podcast, Mike Robertson, and you had a great podcast as well. And so my objective today is to kind of build on some of these conversations that are already out there. And I really want to start to talk about monitoring and profiling. Profiling athletes because as coaches, you know, we kind of dive headfirst into this data, sometimes gets a little overwhelming, but on the back end, once coaches work with this stuff enough, I feel like we're able to, uh, make really simple training related decisions. And I, and I'm hoping we can kind of grow this conversation toward that today. So first and foremost, I just want to start by talking about the counter movement jump, because I know it's far and away the most common and popular test and probably the most researched test. That we can use with the force plates. So can you break this down itself and talk about what coaches can gather from this above and beyond? Maybe what are just standard assessments that we've been using up to this point?
Drake Berberet:Yeah. So, uh, the category of a jump, it's, it's the most common assessment that anyone is doing on plates. Um, I think. Over the last few years, like, it was probably 80 percent I forget the exact number, but we're to blog about it on our website. But out of all the tests that have been collected on on our system, 80%. So it's a, it's a large amount of test. It's a great spot for people to get started. It really helps people understand the other tests as well. So the reason for that is there's 6 key phases of that test. Uh, so there's the Wayne, uh, period or Wayne phase on waiting phase. The breaking phase propulsive phase flight phase lightning phase. So 6 of them, there's a paper out there by. There's a bunch of researchers on it, I think Dr John McMahon, which is our director of education is actually he's leading off around that. I believe, but that's really what all of our math and calculations are derived from. But it's. Each 1 of those phases, those are things that exist in pretty much all movement as we move throughout our life and also playing sport. So, if we're just simply walking, there's an unweighting period, there's a breaking period when our foot comes into contact, we transfer from that breaking to pushing off, which is propulsion, and then we hit again, we land, or we unweight, we land, we break, propel ourselves, and take another step, so on and so forth. Um, so if something as simple as walking, all those phases exist. But even if we go into sport, right? So the same thing happens. And you know, like the kind of movement jump is up and down, right? It's like in one plane of motion in sports, a lot of points of motion, but it's still those six days still happen. Someone goes to make a cut, they unweight, they break, they transfer from breaking repulsion as they're planning and moving away from the ground. They enter flight, which flight is just pushing themselves away from the ground. And then they do it again when they hit on the other side leg. So that's why the counter jump is so important, because it's making an assumption about movements in the world or in sport that happen in a more dynamic, reactive, more points of motion. But this is doing it in a very structured, uh, thing that is repeatable, has a lot of research behind it, like, honestly, for probably hundreds of years. Yeah, just a repeatable way that we can assess this time in and time out. And then that's used for things like, like you mentioned before for monitoring athletes, which, which monitoring is just like, hey, how does this person change from 1 day to the other benchmarking or profile an athlete? So, hey, this was the preseason or now a season. What are those 2 look like compared to each other? Or, hey, we have. This athlete is really young and we want them to be like this all pro guy over here. Do they, or what qualities do they share that are similar? They both put the same sport position, um, or then return to play. If you do get to it, it's inevitable. Like people are going to get injured, but countermeasure jumps kind of like, uh, that set point, they try to get them back to, um, in that process before you advance them to something that, uh, might be like a higher demand test, like some sort of reactive rebound, um, jump test, but it just gives you. Within that return to play process, it just gives me confidence say, this person's getting close to healthy and gives you a set point to advance them through that plan.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, I'd like to maybe dive into the leads a little bit here because I know you had talked about, um, I've heard you talk before just riff on the, you know, breaking phase, the propulsive phase, and you guys are pretty clear not to use.
Drake Berberet:Eccentric and concentric when referring to this phase. And so would you, would you care to break that down a little bit and talk about maybe why you guys made that made this distinction? Yeah. So all of our stuff comes from that paper and the researchers that are on that paper. So, um, when I didn't build a software, I, like, we have developers and those decisions were made before before I was all. Um, but essentially, like, eccentric action, concentric action, those are muscle actions. They're not movement actions or phases. Um, so that's why we call banks, uh, breaking pulsion. Where, like, those would be synonymous, but not the same. So, breaking would be the same as eccentric quotation marks up here. And then propulsion concentric. So, like, if you're, you're used to those terms, you should start to rephrase them too. You know, what they should be, but by what research says, um, yeah, so, like, like, research go, they go around and sort all the time with, like, what is the best term for these situations? Right? So, if you're reading a paper, that is like, really well adopted in a space. And there's a lot of like thought leaders on paper and other people are citing that a bunch and this is now the adopted norm for this industry, right? What we should be calling links. So, if we're really trying to, like, push an industry forward and get better at, like, just progressing it as a whole, using the right terminology, we should all be using. Uh, breaking propulsion, unweighting, you know, flight landing. Those are pretty much the same. All software is flight landed. So,
Ryan Patrick:yeah, I just just want to put a stamp on that. So everyone knows what we're talking about. Yeah. Um, so you talked, you already talked a little bit about this, but I'd like you to dive a little bit deeper. So. Uh, change of direction, right? These phases that we're observing in the countermovement jump are happening in any kind of change of direction. There's a lot of athletes who maybe their sport doesn't involve just jumping in this vertical plane, right? If I'm looking at a baseball player, it's primarily an asymmetric sport that might be jumping if they're, you know, jumping for a fly ball or something like that. But a lot of the, uh, Aspects of the sport require their performance to happen in different planes. So how useful can the force plate and even just the counter movement jump B for assessing, you know, readiness or what kind of performance qualities that we're looking for in these kinds of athletes who maybe don't jump as a primary action.
Drake Berberet:Yeah. I mean, Like using intuition and just like kind of some, some critical thinking, like people for a long time have made assumptions of like certain metrics that probably give you a good proxy to whatever movement or we're comparing. Um, but as we get more data collected, get bigger sample sizes, we can start to make like, broader claims and have like, some actual validity behind it. Um, so there's 2 good examples, and I'm trying to do the same thing with with my research for, uh, my Ph. D. like, really oriented on on basketball and force play usage, but there's 2 good papers that I kind of point to, and I cited both in my paper that's coming out. But, uh, Dr John McMahon has his paper and some other research on there in professional rugby over the UK and basically. As they improve their jump momentum on a counter movement jump, as that value went higher, um, they also improved their sprint. As they were sprinting, I think it was 20 meters, um, which I think is, I'm going to butcher the math here, but it's like 40 plus yards, it's a little over 40. Um, so basically, We might need to fact check that, but the yards, but it's like a 0. 7 or 8, uh, relationship between the two. So it's really high. So you can basically make an assumption with the large data set that, hey, if I have this athlete in the weight room and I'm improving their jump momentum, and then I'm also working on their sprint technique, like, you don't stop doing that stuff. But jump momentum is going up and this controlled assessment that I can do wherever I have a force plate and I'm traveling with it, I can keep testing it. Values up, they should go spread faster. Um, so that's 1 that kind of makes a proxy to something that's like, on the field or on the court. Um, and we found that as well, like, like, we do the NFL combine testing. And all their 40 times are public, right? So, like, we have force play data, all the 40 times are public. Right? Quick correlation. It's 0. 8. It's been pointing for 2 years. Um, and that's that's not a research study, right? But it's like, a very control point time. Where every single person is peeking for that moment. Um, they jump on the place. And then they literally go and do the 40 about, it's like, 45 minutes later. But in their warming up between, so they jump from the 4 point in correlation and then another 1 that that's been really cool. And this kind of gets more towards the changes direction stuff. Um, you go fill up, he's a Kansas basketball, uh, working with Ransi there. He's a PhD students who's done a lot of work on the 1st place with the team. Um, he basically found that athletes have a higher with, within the, I think it's just men's basketball. He did some work with the women's too, but the men's team, they found that athletes have a higher breaking reinforced element, had a higher on court contribution throughout the whole season. So basically, if your athlete has a higher breaking RFD, you have a higher likelihood to contribute to your team. That's basically what you can take away from that. Um, one of the, like he had, you know, one team. Uh, PhD that I'm running right now, I have 7, uh, power 5, which my basketball team, so it's 96 players. And I'll basically put up, like, I'm trying to look and see if that same thing exists, which is what all research is, like, 1 person find something you try to other people try to replicate it. Find the same thing as more evidence, so those are things we're looking into, but in short, like, you can basically say, all right, like, you're breaking qualities will give you insight on. Things out of the field that are, are decelerating. In nature, right? So, like, uh, go to make a cut, change direction, like, if someone has really high, if all of their breaking qualities are good, you know, breaking, breaking philosophies, breaking forces, we can talk about the different metrics that we might look at there. But if those are high compared to other people that they're like, like, same age, same sport, same position. It's probably a good chance. They're going to put their foot into the ground on the, on the field of the court and beat their defender. That doesn't have those same qualities and the control counter with Joe.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, the, uh, the rate of force development makes a lot of sense, right? So you got athletes at same age and skill level, but you got 1, who's clearly better at, you know. You know, with a high breaking RFD, I'm thinking better transitions, right? These guys can can navigate the court because they can stop and go a new direction faster than the other guy. The 1 that's interesting to me, and I want to ask a clarifying question here. So you're talking about, uh, did you guys run it like a linear regression on jump momentum and 40 times?
Drake Berberet:Yeah.
Ryan Patrick:Okay. And that was like an R squared or like what? 0. 7 or 8? Is that what you said?
Drake Berberet:Like 7, 9, 5, 4. I guess it was 0. 8. Yeah.
Ryan Patrick:Why do you, why do you think that is? Because I'm thinking, you know, your, your counter movement jump is kind of this slow, uh, stretch shortening cycle and the ground contact times are just vastly different with sprinting. So, I mean, do you have any thoughts on that? Just kind of off the cuff?
Drake Berberet:Yeah. I mean, the counter movement jump is slow and that's something I'm trying to get out. I'm trying to. Use my PhD to kind of answer that question too, right? Cause like people are always like, what is social short is like a, what is fast? Is it that 250 millisecond marker or is the wiggle room? Um, it is slow for looking at the counter jump compared to sprinting. But what the counter movement jump is, is you're just you're trying to violently, like, move your mass away from the ground. So, like, we use jump height to answer that question of, like, oh, this is how well they did that. Right? But, like, honestly, I care about everything before they actually, like, jump and leave the play. Like, I care about everything up until the point they leave, like, the jump is cool and it gives you a measure of, like. The outcome, but everything before that is really what matters the most. Um, but I think going back to the question of where it fell off on a tangent, but. Um, it's just like, hey, how violently, quickly and and high powerfully can you move your mass this direction? And then, all right, when you go sprint, how finally, quickly, powerfully can you move your mass that direction? Um, so they're both 100 percent effort. One's just vertical, one's horizontal. Contact times are different, but they're both, you know, demanding. So I think if one, if they excel at one, they're, they're most likely to excel at the other, which would, it's point A, so it explains 80 percent of the variance.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, that's really interesting too, because obviously with the sprinting world, there's just a huge, uh, premium right now on, you know, the, the horizontal force ratio and the decrement or the ratio of force. But clearly, you've got to be able to still produce a massive amount of vertical force and I don't know. It's my way of thinking. This is probably overly simplistic, but guys that are fast. I also expect them to jump high. And when I see somebody dunk, I'm like, Oh, he's probably pretty fast too. You know? So it's like this, this vertical force force vector to me is still like, just absolutely critical.
Drake Berberet:Yeah. It's the highest force vector. And we just talked about this, um, off air a minute ago, but it's the highest force vector and it virtually every movement, even if that movement is horizontal anterior, posterior, whatever, it's, it's going to be the highest vector. Um, so that's why you can get away with like a one D force plate and, Nearly every situation. Um, I can tell you a lot of insightful things about movements that are horizontal or change direction or
Ryan Patrick:1D force plate anyway. I mean, I know a lot of them are iterations and, and you're kind of starting with the impulse momentum relationship and things can break down from there, but, and you had 2 more vectors in and things really start to get spicy.
Drake Berberet:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Um, it's a lot like I've used it before. Um, but that's where I started. Like, I started with a 3d plate. Um, and I think it was my master. So, like, Matt lab, you had to process it yourself. And then I, uh, went to a place called resilience code, worked with action or so, uh, but we had for tech force plates there, which are 3d interacts on software. Um, we did balance stuff. We looked at 3D forces, but I really did start to like deriving a ton of value from place until I started using Hawking and the 1B plates at Illinois.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, I remember doing my masters and this was probably, you know, 15 years ago now, but, um, we had these massive, uh, just Excel spreadsheets. We had to run like inverse dynamics on everything. And I mean, we practically me and my lab partner practically drain the coffee shop trying to, you know, figure this stuff out every weekend. It was just, it was crazy. Now it's a test. I get metrics that are relevant. I get things I can use right away. So kind of to that point. You know, I want to transition this conversations. How can we start to profile athletes based on some of these movement signatures? Right? So we already talked about basketball players. And their extreme rate of force development. I work with a lot of younger athletes who I would say are just very force deficient. And so they have a unique profile. And then there are some athletes who are just, you know, super explosive have tons of propulsive force. So I just like, you know, would like to hear kind of your thoughts on on maybe the buckets we can put these athletes into or what things we should be thinking about. As we're kind of looking at these force time curves.
Drake Berberet:Yeah, so I think right now, I wouldn't say like everybody's looking, everybody's thinking about force plates wrong, uh, but like I think we should value more of like the shape and how that, that force trace actually looks, um, than we do. So the metrics are trying to answer, essentially trying to answer something about the shape. But we look at the metrics and we're like, oh, if you don't have this value, then we have to do this. We don't have this failure through that. Well, like, I would start 1st, looking at the shape and then answer with the metric. Um, but you can tell a lot about how someone moves and what they're lacking in or deficient and just by simply looking at the shape. Like, we talked about breaking RFD, like, being a good metric for someone putting foot in the ground. And change the direction. Um, but yeah, it's not just about having a high breaking RFD value because if you, if you throw that force through the roof when you're breaking, it gets up really high. But then, when you get to that low position, if you can't, if you don't actually have, like, the integrity at the low position to transfer from breaking to propulsion. Any of that force you just developed, you're going to dissipate all of it. You're not going to use any of it in propulsion and then the jump high, which on the court would be. Yeah, you go and you break really hard, but then, like, you just get, like, stuck in the mud there at that point. Right? And you can't get out of it quickly and push away from the ground. So, it's not just about having a high value. It's about looking at the 1 measure, but then looking what happens after it as well. Does that make sense?
Ryan Patrick:Oh, that's perfect. Right? There's so we have some athletes, right? They, um. To your point, the amortization, right, or that transition point between breaking and propulsion, it's like, you almost need a sundial to time them because I feel like they're just like, still for, you know, a fraction of a 2nd, where it just seems like they take forever. So, you know, where would you start just from a training perspective of an athlete who. Maybe gets caught in the mud. Is this scenario? Well, they need more propulsion. They need to push out of this, or do they need better breaking capabilities to actually manage these forces? Or is there something we should be doing in between to kind of influence these. Um, capabilities.
Drake Berberet:Yeah, so, um, like, I, when I look at a 4th time period, I really look at, like, the, the point that peak force occurs 1st, I guess, probably the 1st thing that catches my eye. Um, so ideally you want that to happen right at the point between breaking and propulsion. So we kind of refer to it as the transfer transfer point here, but you want it to happen there. So if it doesn't happen there and it happens like often in propulsion, it could happen like immediately after that, that force of minimum displacement mark. Which could be like, all right, that's still pretty close. They're fairly efficient at transferring from break or could exist, like, way off, you know, further within the face. So, they may get to that low position and then they actually then rebound back up. It's like a double peak. It's called a model peak. Um, and research read about that, so it could happen way off later, which would essentially tell you, all right, there's, what is the reason? Well, you have to ask, right? What is the reason that they don't get to be forced out that low position? And then you, you know, the athlete test. And so it's like, all right, well, are they a tall athlete? Do they have really long levers? Because they could have gotten that low position and they could have just, they get thrown a large torso at the ground, right? So there's a lot of weight associated with that. They get to the bottom. And then they start to come up and they throw their torso up second, which creates that double peak. So it's like, all right, they may not be horrible at getting the peak force at a low position, but then they're just throwing their torso to create that web. It creates a double peak. Um, they could have a double peak if, if they're not tall, long leavers, like, I mean, the goal for a long leaver person should still be to try and get them that peak force at a low position. Like, you should try to get a number of up as 1 instead of that whip action. Um, but if they're not tall, and they have that double peak, like, the questions I'm asking in my head, like, how old is this person? Are they really young? Like, do they just not really have any breaking qualities in their, their whole portion, which is really common in younger, um, athletes. Um, do they have a history of injury? Like, those are, that's another common 1. So if they or current injuries, so if they have current injury, their, their breaking is going to be limited because. Imagine if like you were out running last night, you stepped on, you stepped on a curb and you rose your ankle this morning, your ankles falling hurts a little bit. You still walk on, still move on it. We say, all right, Ryan, you're still going to jump. But when I tell you to go jump and apply harmless effort, your angle is going to hurt when you, as you get into flexion. So as you're getting into flexion, that is, that's you breaking also. So you're going to be hesitant to break, which then will make your breaking phase, not as steep, not as good. Might not get the peak force of that low position like you normally do. And then you may try to make up for it within propulsion. So, like, that's insightful for like the monitoring standpoint of monitoring, you know, possible injury soft tissue thing as Susan, um, or it could be history of injury. So I've seen this a lot working with like, like some more like NBA, like veteran athletes that have, have gone through, like, maybe they're, they've been really good. They're explosive, powerful, fast, the whole gamut of things. But then now they're, there's their point in their career. Where it's like, hey, now injuries are the reason why I'm not on a team. So, like, teams are fearful because they have this history. They don't want to invest in them, but they've been good for 8 years before that. So, it's like, alright, can we look at, and when I, when we look at those people's curves, we're like, alright, like, this thing looks like, it looks like a rolling hill, right? Because it's not, as they're moving through flexion, as they unweight and break, different limbs, like the ankle joint, you're like, ah, this, this one hurts. Let's look at the other side, take a look. And subconsciously, maybe it doesn't hurt, but it, that this curves, what's in our forces are just zigzagging the whole way up through, through unweighting and breaking. Uh, so that can, that could be a reason for typically those people have like peak force up and propulsion as well because the breaking is limited. So there's a lot of different reasons that someone might not get to that peak force at that low position. But it's, it's hard to tell that in metric, right? You can kind of look at a few different metrics and piece that together, but the shape provides you with a lot of that information. Um, and then you still have to be like a coach of the science, right? Like, just like you're a coach of training the athlete. You still have to ask those questions in your head and try to figure out which one makes the most sense for this athlete. Um, that's your hypothesis. Then you train it and implement something that might work on it, see if it changes. And then if it doesn't change and you try something different. See if it changes, but that's how I approach, like, the training question. If I should make something trainable within a metric or within a force top curve.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, we've, uh, you know, when I first got the 4th, I've almost worked backwards from, like, the flight phase in terms of levels of interest for myself. Right? So I first get the force plates and I'm like, let's talk about, you know, Propulsive net impulse and how can we, like, get the propulsive phase better? And then I'm like, well, like, in order to do that, we have to accomplish something in that breaking phase, right? We need a high breaking. I need that red bands and your guys software to become narrow and they needed to spike. And now I've almost even gone back. Another step, it's what you're talking about is really looking at how these athletes are unweighting, you know, what's happening, how effective are they at getting into the bottom position efficiently and is it jagged or can they do it effortlessly? And so I think I'd love for you to just riff on the unweighting phase and kind of its contribution to the rest of the job while we're on this point.
Drake Berberet:Yeah, it is really important. Um, and it's just, it's just math. So like if we're starting to apply. And we'll just work backwards and I present on this a lot. So it's like, it's just a bunch of equations. So it's like, all right, if you want someone to jump high within the fly phase, then they need to move quickly when they leave the force plate, which would be take off velocity, which happens right after peak velocity, which is like somewhere, uh, in the middle towards the end half of ocean in order to have a high peak velocity, you have to have a big number within your compulsive net impulse. And that means above system weight. So it's really like how much relative impulse can you produce within that propulsive phase, which in our software is a green area. Um, and it's not, you couldn't do a lot, right. But you could do it. You might not have a high peak and you do it for a long period of time. That's still equals the same as if you had a short and a high peak. So that's relative to the sport. Right. But the goal is just, how do we make this, how do we make more of this propulsive relative impulse. That will give us a greater potential to the IP philosophy. I take a loss of jump by. So it's like, great. I understand that. Um, there's research out there on that. You understand that like a lot of people do some don't, but it's really important concept if you don't to get, but then you start working backwards and it's like, all right, this I've only made my way through half of this for slackers, what is before it's breaking that. So the breaking phase. We'll set up a proposal phase, but then you have the key point we talked about on this podcast too is that transfer point. So it's like, how well can I get my everything I developed within breaking. into propulsion. So if I can do that, well, let's just say that's really good. Then check that box. But then we have to move backwards even further to the on waiting phase, which is the first phase of the jump. Um, mathematically, that impulse, which is the area under the curve from waiting, it's going to be the same as the breaking impulse above. So it would be like negative negative 80 unweighted impulse. It'll be positive 80, uh, breaking. So those two will be equal. So it's really, it starts here on waiting. Cause whatever we do here, we'll get us into breaking. And then we transfer it. Well, they've been ocean fast and we jump off. So on waiting is extremely important in order to set up the rest of the jump. But then, you know, people say, well, I want my athlete say, it'd be a guard or whatever. We want them to have a really short and waiting quick, get quick. They don't really get that over the ground. And they're going to use a lot of, like, momentum to just power through the breaking, probably going to hit peak force of repulsion, jump off the plate strategy is not bad because relative to their sport, what they're asked to do, that may be more beneficial now, would they jump higher if they use more of their own waiting and we had a little bit of time to work with them on that training? Probably they probably would jump higher. But then it's like, would that make them better at their sport? Yes or no. Would that make them more resilient? Yes or no. I probably argue it would make them a little more resilient. I don't know if it would help them with the sport, but if you make them more resilient, then they add two, three years at their, the end of their career that they're making some guys 60 more million dollars. Like there's a lot of value there. So, you know, it's just trade off performance and longevity. You may sacrifice a little bit of performance in return for that longevity. Um, so, yeah, unweighting is really important. You want it to look like a, like a really clean U, um, get down close to zero. And this is like generic, right? But if you look at one, this is where you might want to take it. So, look like you get down close to 0 Newtons. If they get 0 Newtons, that basically means they just did a mini drop jump on the plate, which I would classify that as a counter jump. Um, but you want it to be that U shape and not like a V shape. So, for example, like someone like ankle injury would be a common place for this would look different, but it may look like the start of a U on the left side if you separated it in half and then it may be like a V on the right side because when they get to that, that bottom of the unweighting, ankles first thing in contact, it hurts. They're more hesitant to go. You're, you are essentially. You're breaking on the second half of the unweighting. It's not called the breaking phase, but you are stopping your mass because you're moving downward forces, right? And so there is some level of breaking. Some people call it, I think, like the yank yielding phase.
Ryan Patrick:Okay.
Drake Berberet:Jewish 1. Um, so, yeah, if that looks more like it'd be instead of a U. There's more hesitant getting through that range of motion. Um, breaking RFD might still be high because once they get out, out of like that ankle flexion, it may not hurt more than they, they boost and jump quickly. So that's how you can kind of start to use the shape to dictate, uh, something about the athlete.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, we, we film all of our athletes, you know, why they're doing these jumps and you'll start to see, you know, some of the movement diagnosis that we, we look at are typically looked at. You'll see representations of that in the curve and then when we go on our turf and they cut, you see similar representations of those inefficiencies. So, I think that's a really good wrap up because the, at least on the unweighting phase, because. What I've noticed recently is just the athletes who unweight better really do have the best chance of success in terms of their, their output.
Drake Berberet:Yeah, and honestly, you can go back even further too, right? It's like, all right, if, if this athlete is perfect in every single phase, and then they weigh less, so, so then the way, then the way things does have an impact, which is the very start of the job. So, yeah, short answer, everything is really important.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, certainly plays off each other. So, um, 1 of the things you talked about here was the shape of this curve. Some of the strategy involved now, I know all athletes are exceptional at covering deficiencies. So, if they do have some kind of movement compensation, they know how to overcome this. And this is the whole purpose of assessment. Right? But when it comes to monitoring. What kind of variables are going to change? What changes might we expect to see in a, you know, forced time curve with an athlete who's suffering a little bit of fatigue? Because for 1, I work with a lot of high school athletes. So my ability to manage their, their entire workload. Is really impaired, right? They've got club, they've got practices, they've got just other things that they're picking up. There's so many things going on on top of academic stress. Maybe they're fighting with their boyfriend, girlfriend or snap snapping each other up till 2, 3 a. m. And all I can rely on is what is this athlete giving me today? So if I'm looking at the force plates, I'm assessing an athlete. What are some, some indications that They're a little bit behind the 8 ball in terms of their recovery.
Drake Berberet:Yeah, so short answer is like anything that has like a time to it. So, or like a speed component as well or velocity. So, that's why, like, you'll see things like modified RSI is like, the catch all and people talk about that, right? For readiness, right? But that's really because of the time on the bottom. Um, so in a kind of movement job, that would be time to take off in a, in a, like a reactive one where you start, you know, on a box or if you're doing Pogos or something, it would be a ground contact time. Um, so for, for readiness, you can use the kind of movement jump. I've used that more than I have used the reactive tests for, for readiness monitoring. Um, and the reason for that, maybe not the most like research sound way to do it, but the reason why I've chosen to use it. It's because it's more repeatable. Um, it's easier for athletes to do, especially at younger athletes. Right. Well, so like there, you probably struggle a little bit with their ability to repeat the same, similar movement day in and day out the same way. They have a large range, um, for the better, for the worst, probably for the worst, the younger athlete, cause they, they just can't control that movement all that well with external responses coming in of all the things you just mentioned. So if you pick something that's extremely, uh, easy for them to reproduce, just give me 100 percent effort every day, which is the counter movement job, then you look at metrics that have a top component to it. Tell you if they're, they're down or up. Um, it's good to look at those alongside your output metrics as well. So. Look at those alongside that, like, your jump height, if you're using a power variable, but the time ones, like, time to take off, you can look at breaking phase. Propulsive phase, like, each 1 of those phases we mentioned, we'll give it a time component to it as well. I prefer looking at a time to take off. Instead of a different face time, and then you can just look at that alongside jump height. But in addition to the time metrics, like a displacement metric is good to look at. So. Uh, we really only get one of those counter movement death. So I would think of that more along the lines of like peripheral fatigue than like more central nervous system fatigue. So like if their, their time, all their temporal time metrics are down, it's probably, you've, you're probably past the point of like them being a little fatigued. But if you try to catch it like at a peripheral level, um, counter movement displacement could give you a good insight in that. So say I just had a higher load practice the night before. Um, then what we had the preceding, you know, week or 2 weeks, you're going to have a little more dogs. My legs are going to hurt a little more. Um, I might not be like fried mentally, but I'm just a little more sore. So I get in coach, coach Ryan's like a jump 100%. They give you an opposite effort, but they go to flex their, their lower body legs are hurting, even though you've warmed them up. So their displacement might not be as low. They may not get as low and they go a little less. So you can use displacement to pick that up. Um, uh, like, I also like looking at, like, asymmetry variables within monitoring process. I don't think of the asymmetry within the monitoring process as, um, like, oh, this is bad or this is good, but you're really, you're really monitoring what the athletes resting asymmetry is. And then, if that is changing too much from day to day, because, like, especially in the private sector, you don't know, like, you didn't watch that practice, right? Like, you're not a strength coach from a team watching every single practice. So, you don't know if some kid, like, broke his ankle playing football, took a helmet to the leg, like, can have contusion, bruise, something could be something small, could be something big. But they just come in because their parents dropped him off and they said, Hey, go, go work out and they're not going to come and tell you that immediately. So you can pick it up on on the force of late to and then be able to have a chance to ask them that question. Is there something wrong with your right leg? Cause you're favoring it 20 percent more than you normally do. Um, just give you that opportunity to ask the question. Why? Uh, other things you could use within that, like I've grown to like, uh, like average relative breaking power for readiness to, uh, that would be more along the lines of like, uh, peripheral fatigue. So like breaking is going to be limited. If, if my body is really sore, I'm not going to break or if there's something that's injured. But if we're looking at monitoring from like a central nervous system perspective, one, it is hard to make that assumption in this entirety with only the CMJ. It helps if you have context of what's happening outside as well. Or if you have like a subjective measure to pair with that. So that's why people say like, you know, writing this questionnaire, jump test, good combination. If you had heart rate stuff that you could track within, which probably not in this setting, but other settings, maybe. Or HRV, any of that, pair that with the jump, and then you have more of us, and you also pair your knowledge with it. You have a really good idea. So, yeah, those are, I threw out some metrics there, but you can use a CMJ for monitoring, but a research might also say, like, use something that has a higher demand. So, um, that thing with the higher demand would be like a drop, drop, jump. Depth jump, I tend to start a drop jump for monitoring at like 30 centimeters, which is, it's around 12 inches. Yeah, but also you could use a counter movement rebound jump, which is a hybrid between the counter movement and the drop. Um, you do a counter movement twice. So the fall first becomes the start of the second, which is your drop and the jump again. Um, or even like a 10, five multi rebound test, um, to kind of prelude a question may ask, like for younger athletes, I would, CMJ rebound because it's going to be really hard for them to reproduce that drop jump, um, day in and day out, like. They're going to step below the box. They're going to, they're going to horse around with their friends and they're not going to, it's going to be tough for them to do. And, and even like with, with college basketball athletes, like sometimes it's taking me two, three weeks to actually teach them how to step off that box and like hit with like a strong foot on the bottom and like feel that recoil, that rebound and jump back off. And if you have someone in for like a short summer, right, like three weeks is a big chunk of your time. Um, so for me and a younger athlete or someone I don't have all the time with, I'm going to use a seam chair rebound. Instead of the drop jump, but if I'm working, you know, if I'm preparing for the Olympics and I have the best 100 meter sprint in the world and I got this long training cycle and we're, we're doing a lot of different phases within that, I'll probably just teach you the drop jump, you know, when I started working with them and then we'll use that for monitoring throughout their training.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, we've, we've definitely favorite the CMJ rebound just because of, you know, having a lot of youth athletes attention span is questionable at times. And I think just for the sake of repeatability, it's what we've gotten to be the most consistent. I just, we've had trouble teaching them, like, literally just how to walk the plank and step off the box. I have I have one question because I know there's some research coming out with the CMJR, but obviously that 2nd jump is going to be dependent on the height of the 1st. So, is this where the variables kind of normalized based on what their jump height is on the on the 1st jump? Or do you kind of see some trends with some of these athletes who have to rebound from a higher jump?
Drake Berberet:Yeah, I think I don't want to give too much information away, but I'll have a paper. Like, my first paper that's coming out is on the CMJ and the second one will be on the CMJ rebound. Um, it'll answer like that question in its entirety. It gives people like a good framework to being like, Alright, is this CMJ, is the first CMJ rebound worthy of saying like, Alright, did they give enough effort compared to what they can normally do in a CMJ? For me then to be able to use the 2nd C and J of that rebound jump. Right? Because like, if they jump, uh, 15 percent less on that 1st C and J of the C and J rebound. I'm throwing out C and J like, so I apologize, but if they jump way less on the 1st one of the C and J rebound as they would on a standalone C and J. Then, like, all right, they, you know, they gave 85 percent on the 1st 1. So, then was there really enough of a fall? Like, were they really falling from their maximum for that that drop down? The answer is no. Um, but I'll throw out, like, some averages, like, what. It needs to be above X percentage in order to be able to use this with, like, high confidence. We just won't get into it right now, but we will eventually.
Ryan Patrick:I'm waiting for that paper now. I'm going to need it in advance.
Drake Berberet:No, it's cool. It'll be cool. Um, I think there are some more papers coming out from the CMJ rebound, but I don't really try to answer that question yet. And, like, my PhD, to be clear, is like, not, it's not like, throwing out novel concepts. It's more so just trying to answer questions that people have been asking for, like, my year, like, 6 years of being involved here. I'm just trying to bring those questions to to research space.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, the other, like, kind of unadvertised benefit of the CMJ rebound, in my opinion, is I feel like the 2nd jump is a real magnifying glass to any asymmetries, right? Because if if there is 1 side that they favor, they're going to come off the force plates a little sideways and sometimes the landing, you know, that impact is seems to magnify some of those. Asymmetries, especially in, like, my return to play kids. So do you have any thoughts on that?
Drake Berberet:Yeah, it depends how you do it. So, and I kind of bring this, I'll talk about it as well in that paper, but there's 2, there's really 2 different ways. You can do and you can do it in the way that we've, you just talked about it. And I think we spoke about this in the past. So, like, we're doing it for return to play. We're like, risk evaluation standpoint. With the athlete to jump as high as they possibly can twice, and there's actually not been, there's not been a single paper out that they've actually done it that in that manner. I've done it a million times and hundreds of different populations of people in return play setting. And it does hold true just as you've seen it, is that, like, if this person, they just tore the right ACL, but they're in late stage rehab from this process, they do. a maximal CMJ rebound, two jumps, and they're not ready yet. There will be a massive difference in that, that landing. And then when they go to jump again, um, between the left and the right leg. So that's like one way to do it. Um, the other way to do it, which is where all the research is focused now, um, if they put out stuff on it, it's do a maximal CMJ, but then the second one is treated more, it's more reactive. So it's like a reactive jump and the goal is not to jump as high as you can twice. The goal is to jump first as high as you can. Um, then land and hit be really quick. So like limited knee flexion, limited ankle flexion, more of just like a pop quick, like you would do with drop jump. Um, the way that we talked about it and for the return to play setting, you're really doing like, it's like a depth jump. If we're going, if we're going back to the old school, like terminology of depth jump versus drop jump, depth jumps higher, drop jump shorter. Deflection ankle flexion changes, which will do same thing with these 2 different styles of CMJ.
Ryan Patrick:Interesting. I haven't even thought about doing it that style and I don't even know that I've looked at the research on that. But yeah, that would certainly that would change a lot because now we're just looking at the reactivity. So it would almost model the drop jump. How did that just just kind of from my own curiosity? How do the curves differ in those 2 in those 2 trials of jumps? Thanks.
Drake Berberet:Yeah, so, like, if you're looking at things like, uh, spring like correlation, um, impact P, like, if you're trying to grade an athlete's reactivity, I would, I would do the 2nd version or really the 1st, the 1st version that has the research behind it, which is jump high and then quick, that would be like, I want to create someone's react. Um, but if you want to grade, like, their risk, then you would do it the way that we do it, which is 2 maximal. CMJ rebounds.
Ryan Patrick:Okay, I'm going to need to make some new tags in my system today, so I can. Yeah. Yeah,
Drake Berberet:you're just tagging our system, like, based on your intended outcome. Like, this is for, like, whatever you want to call it, but one is like, uh, benchmarking. And then one, one could be, uh, like, return employee risk ID. So, like, you get a new kid that comes into your facility, you probably have them do the maximal one because you want to see if they have a risk first. 1, because you care about the kid, and you want to help improve that, but hey, this is why you need to sign up for training at my facility, because I see this, we have this technology here, we have a path to fix it. Um, but as you keep that person, or say, you get a team that comes into your facility, and coach is like, I want to know who's the most explosive reactive, whatever term they use, then you might do the 2nd. Way of doing it, which is jump on quick. I'm a 2nd.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah. Yeah. The other thing, um, I was recently at a workshop with Matt Jordan. So, obviously talking a lot of force plate and stuff. And 1 of the things that was brought up there that I thought. I had never really considered before was to give different cues to ascertain the capabilities of certain joints. Right? So if I do a pogo jump, obviously, it's a very ankle dominant joint. Most of the time when I've tested people on force plates, I don't say much. It's jump as high as you can. And I want to see what strategy you utilize. But as you know, like in the ACL return to play, there can be more hip dominant strategies that they, you know, acquire in an effort to protect the knee. So this counter movement rebound jump almost seems to kind of play into this idea of giving them different cues or giving a different context for how we want this jump to maybe isolate the effects at certain, certain joints. And I just think that's really cool because it's a simple way to do it. Dad. You know, all you're really having athlete do is focus on different kinds of outputs.
Drake Berberet:Yeah. So it's not, it's not motion capture, right? Like a force plate isn't, and we're not person, all the joints and, and really looking at each joint independently. But if you, if the things we've talked about on this podcast, just along with like how the person moves through each one of those phases. You can make really strong assumptions of what's happening at each major joint in the lower body, based on when things like, when left and right forces flip at certain points in time, again, there are assumptions and you need a lot more like, bigger studies with large sample sizes, motion capture and. Looking at these metrics to answer that question, but I feel really confident about it that it that it does exist. Um, just by, like, looked at a lot of force timers over the years and a lot of people that have had injuries. So, it does hold true. It just hasn't been like, really validated research yet.
Ryan Patrick:No, I totally get that right there. There's certain physical laws of how you move and how you're going to be able to apply force that we expect some kind of movement strategy to. Uh, coincide with what we're seeing on a force plate.
Drake Berberet:Yeah. 100%. Um, yeah, and not, Jordan puts out great work too. Um, like he, he, he especially is really, I think within, within that return to play study,'cause he is worked with a lot of different, uh, like skiers and, and like return to play process when he was with, with Kate Sport.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah. I would think the Alpine skier has to be like. The ultimate stress test for ACL rehab. I mean, you're, you're going, I don't even know how many kilometers an hour down a mountain on a slick surface. I mean, it's, it's not like breaking on a soccer field when you're, you know, you're a 9 meters a 2nd sprinter, which is still fast for a female, but
Drake Berberet:yeah, Alpine and Nordic, they're extremely strong breaking, like, whether they're breaking qualities and their isometric qualities. So, yeah. Um, I was fortunate at Colby College. We had 32 sports, which is a division three school up here in Maine. So I spent a little over two years like doing data science for science for, um, the strength coaches, PTs, ATs up there. And our, our, uh, skiers were always the strongest. They always had the highest grade qualities. Like, it's pretty cool, um, to see them jump on the force plates and test.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, I need to get a hold of it. We don't have any mountains nearby. I mean, we have like, we have like, 1 hill in Indiana that we can go ski on, but it's like, I don't know, a 15 2nd run maybe. So, the last question I want to ask you is sort of philosophical, right? So there's a huge data revolution. It's becoming more accessible by a lot of coaches. A lot of practitioners. And I know for myself, like, early on, I got lost in the woods and I think that's almost essential to kind of figure out how to navigate some of this information and use it in a very tactical and purposeful and simple way. But what do you see for the evolution of force plates over the next 3 to 5 years? Is it just more of the same? Do we really start to ascertain some of these important questions that we've talked about that just haven't been answered by research? What do you see coming?
Drake Berberet:Yeah, I think I think, like, the applied is already persuading, like, the research in a good way. Um, there's been a lot of papers that have come out really within the last year or even the last couple of months that have answered a lot of really good questions. So I think that that's a good step. Um, but just like people, like, the volumes of data that are being collected on force plates is like, astronomical compared to where they were, like, even just a couple of years ago. So, we're, we're still working through all of that, but once you have large data sets, you can start to make. Higher level assumptions about different things, like we talked about, um. On core on field stuff, like, getting closer to answering those questions. Um, because the goal has always been, like, we have this very controlled thing and this. A range of motion that we can take wherever we are, and we can make an assumption about something that's like, very reactive in nature, not only, you know, reactive, like, off the ground, but reactive to their opponents. Like, how do we make that more connected? That's always been my goal. Started like, in basketball, right? Like, when I was at Illinois, because, like, your best player on the team doesn't jump the highest. Like, at least on the team that we had, right? Or the two teams that we had on this air. So, it's like It's like, well, fuck, like, what does that mean? And how do I, how do I figure out what actually matters? So that's always been the goal. It doesn't change. I think we'll, I think this technology in the space will advance a lot in the next 5, 10 years, like you asked or said, but. We're still trying to answer some pretty simple questions just with more confidence.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, I talked to some, some parents when they come in with their kids. Um, you know, it's like, we can, we can improve speed, power, strength. Yeah. You know, we can improve athleticism, but if you're a low skill athlete, you're basically like, for scum, right? You're just a machine, but like, no concept of the game or the world around you. So, not as you can imagine, not many teenagers get that reference these days, but the parents seem to appreciate it. So. All right, man. So for you personally, do you want to share a little bit about your recent training success and talk about what you're, what's upcoming next for, for your own training?
Drake Berberet:Yeah, I like to do a lot of different stuff as we were talking about before this. Um, but I ran a half marathon pretty recently, started picking up biking again. So I'm going to really, I try to run a 5k every single week for a year. Like that's just a kind of a fun goal and then, uh, run a half marathon every year as well. So. Then after for the last 2 years, um, I play a game of pickup basketball or pick a ball at least every week. But, you know, like, 20, 20 miles a week, um, with 4 or 5 days a week. So I like to train, but I like to do, you know, training, um, endurance. I like to be able to run distance, not feel like shit when I'm doing it and then also be able to be athletic and go do. direction, you know, jumping high all that fun stuff to
Ryan Patrick:on top of all the professional stuff you've got your hand into man. It's super impressive. So I mean, on that note, what's next for Drake Burberry? What are you excited for? What's coming up?
Drake Berberet:Yeah, I was coming up. So we're writing a book right now. I won't say for who, but it's just, it'll be a big chapter within a book. I think it'll, it'll be really good for a lot of coaches. It should be out in the next month. Um, doing a couple talks coming up this summer. So the next 1 will be at the NBA. Strength conditioning clinic in Las Vegas, that's in July. So, that'll that'll kind of be along the lines of some of the research I'm doing. But we'll go out there and present to them and then, yeah, just just advance that. I'm actually I'm traveling a little bit though this weekend. There's a catapult conference. Um, at the university. We have a good relationship with University of Louisville, so we'll go out there and support them for that. Um, yeah, that's that's my next couple of months. Got a few consulting trips too for, um, different users of ours that have wanted a little more advanced tailored stuff. So I'll go out there, execute those and just have fun doing it, see new places as well.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, man, I need to slide down to Louisville one time when you're in town. It's only about a 90 minute drive from where I am.
Drake Berberet:Yeah, this one will be quick. I'll literally be there for 24 hours. So maybe not this one, but next time I'm in town, I'll let you know.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, for sure. We'll get you over at the University of Kentucky, you know, really represent the state. But anyway, man, thanks for carving the time where I appreciate you, you know, making time to do this. It was really interesting conversation and, uh, appreciate your help as always, man. Anytime I need anything from anyone at the Hawking team, you guys are on top of it and super helpful. So I appreciate it. I appreciate you being here. Thank you.
Drake Berberet:I really appreciate it, Ryan. I've enjoyed our relationship and enjoy this podcast. So thanks for having me on.
Ryan Patrick:All right, man. Take care.