From Lab to Podium: Turning Sports Tech Into Game-Day Results w/ Yassir Kahook Ep 49

In this episode, Coach Ryan Patrick sits down with Yassir Kahook, Sports Science Coordinator and Strength Coach at Cressey Sports Performance Florida. Yassir pulls back the curtain on how CSP integrates force plates, Proteus Motion, and the 1080 Sprint into athlete development—from pro baseball players to youth athletes.

You’ll learn:

• The key force plate metrics that matter (and the ones that don’t).
• Why the shape of the force-time curve may be more valuable than jump height.
• How force plates reveal athlete readiness and fatigue beyond the surface.
• Practical testing insights for high school, college, and pro athletes.
• How sports science connects to on-field performance like sprinting, cutting, and throwing velocity.

Whether you’re a coach, athlete, or just a performance nerd, this episode will help you separate the signal from the noise in sports tech—and apply data where it counts most.

📍 Follow Yassir on Instagram: @ykahook
📍 Read his Substack: Performance Science

Chapters

• 2:15 Force plates: beyond “expensive jump mats”
• 6:30 The key metrics & force-time curve shapes that matter
• 10:30 Why non-jump athletes should care about jump testing
• 14:15 Secondary tests & technology: squat, drop, Proteus, 1080 Sprint
• 23:15 Readiness, recovery, and modifying training for fatigue
• 31:00 Connecting force plate data to sport outcomes
• 45:30 Overrated vs. underrated uses of sports science + closing thoughts

Transcript

Yassir Kahook: 0:00

we program in four week blocks. So if, if somebody's numbers are super down and in week three, I'm, I'm not entirely worried. And, and a lot of times I'm, I'm not making an adjustment'cause I know they're probably gonna have a little bit of a deload on, on week four. Right. Um, and they're gonna trend back upwards.

0:23

Welcome back to the Athletic Performance Podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Patrick. If you're new here, make sure that you smash the subscribe button so that you can get alerts about new episodes when they drop. And if you're not new and you're coming back for another episode, thank you so much for the time that you spend listening to this. Thank you so much for your support. If you've already subscribed to this, please make sure you leave us a five star and five star only review. It doesn't take much, but it really helps us get the word out to other coaches who are serious about leveling up. So if you know a coach like that, please share this episode or another episode on the socials, and that way we can reach more coaches and athletes who are serious about leveling up. Now onto today's episode, I am joined by, yes, sir. Ka Hook one of the sharpest young voices in sports science, and he is the Sports Science Coordinator at Cresty Sports Performance in Florida. So yes, there's a guy who is in the trenches every day. He oversees force plate testing, their proteus motion testing, as well as some 10 80 sprint profiling and some other stuff they have going on, which I think he talks about in this episode today. So in our conversation, yes, there breaks down how to move beyond using the force plates as expensive jump mats and to actually use them to guide training. We dig deep into force time, curve shapes, and athlete archetypes. How to measure readiness and recovery and what it takes to translate data into on field performance. So if you've ever wondered how to bridge the gap between sports science and coaching, or you just wanna peek behind the curtain at how CSP develops elite athletes, this episode is packed with insights you don't want to miss. But enough for me onto my conversation with Yaz.

Ryan Patrick: 2:11

yeah. Sir. Welcome to the show, the Athletic Performance Podcast. I am really excited to bring you on because I have been following a lot of your posts related to the sports science stuff. It's obviously an area of interest and. Part of our assessment protocol. So before we dive into that, because I got a, a full lineup of questions for you today, why don't you just give me a quick background on you, um, your origin story, kind of bring me up to speed with where you are and what you're doing today.

Yassir Kahook: 2:35

Yeah. Well, thanks a lot for having me on. Ryan. Excited to talk shop. So, yeah, I'm originally from, um, near Akron, Ohio. Cuyahoga Falls. I grew up playing baseball played in college a little bit at the University of Akron and University of Toledo. I'm at Cresty Sports Performance Florida. I serve as the sports science coordinator and a strength and conditioning coach. Before that though, I was an athlete through Cresty sports performance, um, in college and in high school. So trained actually with Eric for some time before becoming an intern. Um Oh, nice. Throughout college. Yeah, throughout college. I, I also interned with, you know, our athletic training staff at Akron and then did a full internship at Cresty Sports Performance Florida, um, in the summer of 2023. And then began full-time in, um, may of 2024 here. Um, started off as a strength and conditioning coach, and then took on the role of sports science coordinator in August of 2024. Been that ever since, um, I kind of oversee implementation and data collection of our force plates, Proteus 10 80. Um. True strength from Hawkin as well. And then, and now kind of involved in our new pitching lab. So we'll have, uh, full biomechanics, motion capture, force plate mounds and kind of all that, all that fun stuff. So yeah, my, my role is very diverse. I oversee a lot of different things. Um, but at the same time, it all kind comes down to the sports science.

Ryan Patrick: 3:52

Absolutely. Quick shout out to the Hawkin guys and Drake. He is, he's the dude. So if you're in the market for force plates gotta be hawing. Yeah, I'm just gonna say they're not a sponsor of the show. I am just a big fan. So, where I want to go today is I really wanna jam on force plates because I'm seeing more and more guys get these, they're becoming affordable. It's really powerful data, but I think, you know, a lot of guys are just using them like expensive jump jump nets, right? Just Oh, like I'm getting really accurate jump heights now, but I think there's a lot more to it. Right. So, you know, when, when you get the Hawkin just right out of the box there, there's a shit load and a metric shit load for my people over the sea of, of metrics that you're getting. Yeah. Right, right away. So let's start by just kind of peeling back some of these layers and defining what are some of the most important metrics to track along with some of the ones that you find are just really misleading or maybe even overvalued.

Yassir Kahook: 4:57

Yeah, so maybe backstory on that first. I, I showed up to Cressey full-time in May of 24. They had already been using force plates for about nine months when I got here. Mm-hmm. Um, at that point, from like a data collection side, we hadn't really done anything in terms of dashboard building, in terms of implementation into programs. So the, the first thing that I kind of tried to do was figure out what, you know, all of the, the 6,000 to 10,000 jumps that we had, you know, meant one and two, figure out how, how we can implement the data from a, a usefulness standpoint in terms of like programming, from that point, like I, I really wanted to just find maybe two or three metrics that we could track, um, and then build it out from there just for ease. Yep. And, you know, sake of, uh, usefulness to our coaches. So kind of my, my main three are, are jump, height, peak velo, and then jump momentum when I'm, I'm talking on a very, very broad level. That, that just gives a sense of, of how, you know, elastic the athlete is one. Um, and then two, like, you know, what kind of force they can produce into the ground. And then we kind of break it up in terms of breaking and propulsive phases as well. So we look at, um, average relative breaking force and then average relative propulsive force. Keeping it relative to body weight, just because we do have a lot of athletes that are different shapes and sizes. It helps us to, you know, standardize things a little bit more.

Ryan Patrick: 6:17

Mm-hmm. Um,

Yassir Kahook: 6:17

and we also look at shape. I know that's, that's not a metric. Mm-hmm. Um, but we're, we're large into archetypes. Um, we use infra sternal angle a ton when it comes to our actual evaluation. So looking at things from a. Unimodal or bimodal earlier, late peak. And then, you know, obviously you have plateaus. I think we have, we have seven archetypes that we use from a shape standpoint. Which, which, honestly that might be my biggest thing. In terms of actual programming the metrics are great. They're always gonna be gold. But, um, in terms of programming, like the shape of what the athlete is jumping and obviously that you, you have to see them jump for maybe two or three weeks before you can determine a consistent shape that they produce. But I think that would always be the gold standard in terms of programming. So yeah, that, that's kind of the, the, the main metrics that we use. We obviously might jump into some asymmetry stuff with some different guys, if there's a, a, a particularly large asymmetry, one side or the other, and different phases as well. But yeah,

Ryan Patrick: 7:13

yeah, I don't wanna lead this, uh. Too much because I know I, I'm on your substack, so I know you're gonna be talking more about shapes. Yeah. Um, there, so, you know, hopefully we'll direct people to, to, to that toward, at the end of the show. Yeah. I'd like to dive into that a little bit. Yeah. And I think the first question is, when we're talking about looking at the shape, are you guys looking at the jumps, uh, with arm swing? Or is this the akimbo where the hands are on the hips?

Yassir Kahook: 7:39

So for our testing protocol, we're, we're actually gonna like, produce a report sheet and like make programming decisions off of mm-hmm. We do hands on, hips counter movement jump.

Ryan Patrick: 7:48

Yep.

Yassir Kahook: 7:48

And honestly, just because that's the easiest to standardize and normalize and, and, and easiest for the athlete to learn at first. Mm-hmm. Um, uh, most of them have done a, a vertical jump and just taking away the hands, takes out some noise in the system, um, and allows us to actually look at the shape a little bit more. So, so hands on hips and then

Ryan Patrick: 8:06

counter jump. Got it. Can you comment a little bit on some of these shapes that you're seeing? What are the most common ones? Um, and with respect to the ISA, I mean, we can definitely dive into that a little bit more and jam on it, but I'd like to know what, what you guys see as kind of the most common and, and what we, what we can learn or actually gather from an information standpoint as far as training goes.

Yassir Kahook: 8:26

Yeah, so I mean. Obviously the, the one that you're probably always chasing is a early peak unimodal graph shape that looks like a straight up, straight down rollercoaster. Mm-hmm. That's pushed side to side. Obviously we, we deal in mostly the baseball population. You might not see guys that are very, you know, apt jumping high. Mm-hmm. Um, that, that they are more like horizontal force producers than maybe vertical. Um, obviously there's a component of vertical in there as well. So early peak bimodal, I would say is probably the one that we see the most. And then early peak plateau after that. And then you do get some unimodal shapes as there in there as well. Sometimes, a lot of times that that comes from guys that are maybe a little bit stiffer. They don't actually have the range of motion to achieve a, a, a large counter movement depth or a long time to take off. So it's just unimodal by happenstance. Yeah. Um, so that could also be a, a telltale sign of where the, the programming might go.

Ryan Patrick: 9:19

Okay. Do you guys look at the unweighting phase?'cause this has been something like, I kind of disregarded early on, but then I started to notice just a lot of, you know, the, when you see the, the hawking data, it's smoothed out, right? Yeah. Or when I see it really jagged, I'm like, man, this person just, just can't even assume like the bottom position without just like shifting. Or, it's almost like they're wiggling their way down there. Does that play in at all to maybe some of the mobility or stiffness interventions that you guys consider?

Yassir Kahook: 9:48

For sure. I, I don't think you can look at it in a vacuum. So for context, we do like a full range of motion evaluation before. Mm-hmm. An athlete would get on the force plate on eval day. So I think you have to look at those hand in hand. But for the unweighting, I look for steep and deep. Are they, you know, confident enough to unweight their body weight? Do they have a range of motion restriction, maybe to one side or the other? Mm-hmm. Does one hip kind of shift one way and so on and so forth? There's obviously so many avenues where they could compensate. So I think looking at it, a big thing for me has been looking at the, the, the force time curve along with the eval. Mm-hmm. And then kind of comparing. And we also do a, a overhead, uh, squat test. So a lot of the times if you see somebody shift into their right hip, they're probably gonna shift into their right hip on the, the counter movement jump as well. So it's just the two things telling you the same thing which could help for programming.

Ryan Patrick: 10:40

Sometimes'cause I work with a lot of developing athletes, so, you know, we have their parents come in and they never even heard of forced place. I'm always describing'em like it's two bathroom scales that you jump on and like, but they're really sensitive. It's kinda like we're, we're seeing what's going on under the hood. But one of the things that I've kind of leaned towards. Over the past, you know, six months to a year is actually taking video alongside this because, you know, we'll see their squat or their overhead squat and it's like, wow, you know, their hips are turning and they're shifting, and then here's what it looks like when they do it really fast, and here's where it matches up on the data. It's like the one knee's like coming in, like somebody chopped it from the side, you know? So that's been, that's been really valuable.

Yassir Kahook: 11:16

Yeah, no doubt. I I, we're starting to get into more of that too. I do that with most of the, the higher level guys that I have. Yeah. Um, take videos often and kind of see changes over time. It's been super helpful.

Ryan Patrick: 11:27

For sure. Now, I know you guys are not exclusively baseball. You talked about being there, you know, is in, in high school, I'm sure just the age range of people that you guys are looking at in the sports that they play is much more vast than I think people on the outside looking in. Uh, totally understand. So, you know, for the kids in soccer base, even baseball or the football lineman where jumping is not necessarily sports specific. I mean yeah, you might jump for a fly ball or something. Why? Why should they care about counter movement, jump performance? Like what is the relevance beyond, can you jump high that you have found, gets these athletes to buy in?

Yassir Kahook: 12:05

Yeah.

Ryan Patrick: 12:06

One

Yassir Kahook: 12:07

buy in. I think competing is, you know, first and foremost if you, if you have five friends that are in there, they're all gonna try to jump higher than the other one. So that, that's been a big thing at the youth level is just getting them to actually see the numbers, see the jump height. It's maybe not something we necessarily look at on a report sheet or anything, but it is up on the iPad. It's fun for them to see it. It gets them to buy in. You know, they, they want to jump higher week to week. But like just speaking to the different sports, I think, you know, the, the higher the amount of ground reaction force you have, you know, the, the faster you're gonna be, the, the quicker you're gonna get in and out of cuts. We might look at different tests for different sports. We don't d deal too much with other sports and we're probably 99% baseball and we have, you know, a good group of volleyball, soccer, golf, tennis you know. Athletes as well. Yep. So we might delve into some different tests to test other qualities. Obviously with a counter movement jump, you're getting a, a slow stretch shortening cycle, whereas maybe for, you know, a track athlete, we do a multi rebound or soccer athlete, we do a drop jump, you know, so on and so forth. Mm-hmm. So that's kind of how we, we standardize it for the other athletes as well. Um, but I, I think speaking to like the youth population, it, it, the force plates are probably just used as a, a, a trend tool more than an evaluative tool. You know, I, I, I, for context, I eval a, uh, a 9-year-old two weeks ago.

Ryan Patrick: 13:28

Mm-hmm.

Yassir Kahook: 13:29

On day one, we did force plate jumps. I, i, I didn't dive into the, the shape of the graph or what his peak velocity was or anything like that, but in six months when the parents want to see a check-in or anything like that, like seeing the, the trend reports and, you know, the, the trends of peak velocity and jump height and ground reaction report, like that's gonna be a huge play at, you know, showing where the progress has come. Most of the kids that, you know, buy into it, they, they know their jump height one, and they may, they might know a few other numbers. Yep. But just seeing trends over time is probably the biggest thing at that, at that level.

Ryan Patrick: 14:04

Yeah. Especially for a lot of the youth. It's like, um, you know, I think about them squatting, right? Every rep looks different. Every jump that they do is going to look different. They, especially at nine, they might even be like, staring off in the space on one rep randomly. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like just trying to keep them locked in. But I think. At least what I've seen, and maybe you can comment on, on your experience here, is we've seen just more of a smoothness to the data over time with these young athletes and start to understand, okay, like, yeah, they're jumping a little bit higher, but I mean, they're not putting on a ton of muscle mass at nine years old and you know, they're training two days a week and they're still learning stuff, but it's like. We're starting to just at least develop a trend of how this athlete actually expresses force and what's gonna be important as they kind of hit peak height, velocity, and, you know, really start to develop more in their sport.

Yassir Kahook: 14:54

Yeah, no doubt. And just kind of speaking to smoothness, this made me think of it, but in terms of graph shape over time as well, I know that's not necessarily like a trend report. You can, you know, easily look at, but look at their trend or look at their forced time curve on day one versus, you know, day one of program six, it's gonna look a lot different. And that's just a qualitative thing of them being able to be a little bit more smoother through force production as well. So yeah, tr trying reports for the younger kids is, is probably the, the go-to. Yeah.

Ryan Patrick: 15:24

Okay. You mentioned this a little bit already, but outside of the, the counter movement jump, what kind of secondary tests do you guys find valuable? And, and feel free to, to riff on any of the other pieces of technology that you guys got. Yeah. A couple that come to mind with respect to the force plate would be like the multi rebound jump you mentioned, or maybe the drop jump maybe the, the isometric mid thigh pool, if we're looking at their peak force. What is helping you just kind of further evaluate what, what the trends are for this athlete?

Yassir Kahook: 15:56

Yeah. So first for, you know, standardization of, you know, testing and protocols. We, we only use counter movement jump. Yep. But if we're looking at, you know, specific athletes and trying to make a change in, in one area or another of their, you know, qualities, we, we might throw in another one. Mm-hmm. Um, so squat jump, I would look at for like pure propulsive capabilities. And then counter movement jump. I would look at str slow stretch shortening cycle. Drop jump is where we, you know, kind of wanna see fast stretch shortening cycle. So maybe an athlete that, you know, needs to get a little more explosive, move slow on the mound. I might track that one over time as well. Yeah. Um, multi rebound is another one that we use. I think that's more looking at elasticity and stiffness. Um, yep. I probably use that with a position player more than any anything. Um, an infielder that would be super helpful. Excuse me. Or outfielders, you know, just anything, you know, stiffness wise, if they're trying to build that, I would throw it in. In terms of other tests that we do, we use, uh, rotational power tests with the Proteus. Yeah. Um, we use a modification of the CREs performance test that you can find on Proteus. And we just look at rotational power and acceleration through that. Most of the time, if you're gonna see an efficiency or a deficiency in port, in power or acceleration with the proteus, it's gonna kind of be similar with the force plate. Okay? They usually do line up, so if somebody's slow, strong, fast, strong, they're gonna, you know, either have that or show that quality as well on their Proteus test. We also have a 10 80. So we, we've started to dabble. We got one in, uh, January, I believe, of 2025 this year. So we started to dabble with some of the force velocity profiling, which I'm excited to do more this off season with the guys. We really didn't get to do it much last off season. You know, it's kind of hard to throw, you know, tires on a car that's moving throughout an off season. Yeah. Um, so we actually have some protocols in place now that we'll, we'll be using this off season mostly with our position players again. And then true strength as well. So we do, um, a half kneeling 90, 90 external rotation, internal rotation, max strength. And, um, the true strength is Hawkins new Dynamometer. So we're excited to kind of put that to use. And kind of use all those in tandem to create, you know, programs for our guys.

Ryan Patrick: 18:09

Now do you guys, let me talk specifically to the true strength. Do you guys have objective, like normative data that you're trying to achieve, or is this kind of an internal measure? Um,

Yassir Kahook: 18:19

this

Ryan Patrick: 18:19

is,

Yassir Kahook: 18:19

this is probably more internal. Mm-hmm. We don't, we, so we got the unit in June of this year. Yeah. So we, we don't have normative data really yet. I, I can't say that. So we're, we're gonna test things at half kneeling at a 90, 90 degrees of abduction. 90 degrees of extra rotation. Yep. And, and we're trying to keep things pretty standardized in terms of getting true glenohumeral extra rotation instead of abduction or abduction or trunk flexion or, you know, extension and adding to the force. So I think our tests will be a little bit different in terms of the normative data. We're probably gonna have a little bit lower force outputs, and that's okay because. We want to see what that rotator cuff is expected to handle or can handle instead of, you know, what is the peck a, what are, what are the, what is the core add? Like we'd rather see, you know, true numbers out of their shoulder. Mm-hmm. And, you know, thoracic region rather than the whole system.

Ryan Patrick: 19:15

Yeah, I would imagine with the volume of athletes you guys see between the two facilities, like you're quickly gonna be at a couple thousand tests and really understand where, where those data points are. So yeah,

Yassir Kahook: 19:26

I think,

Ryan Patrick: 19:27

I think it, it,

Yassir Kahook: 19:27

it'll probably take the off season to, to get true normative values. Mm-hmm. Um, but quickly we'll probably see trends internally as far as what those numbers will look like. And obviously we, we, we did it a little bit with the college kids here and there as well. And then we'll just kind of create, you know, uh, our normative data set from there as terms of what we're trying to look at or what we're, you know, looking for.

Ryan Patrick: 19:48

Yeah. Alright. Couple pro tips that I need from you since you've tested a lot of athletes. I'm gonna flip, flip back to the force plates. So you mentioned the squat jump, which is there are some kids, again, I have mostly high school athletes. Impossible to do. I mean, they cannot not make a counter movement. And the drop jump, especially from a standardization process of how they're walking off the box to standardize that. So I'd like to hear what's working for you guys.'cause this is, these are two areas we've had trouble with. So the squat, we've kind of, the squat jump we've thrown out in favor of more of A-I-M-T-P, just getting max force concentric, if you will, iso. And then the drop jump, we've kind of favored the counter movement, jump, rebound. Okay. So, but anyway, I'd like to hear if you got some insight on this. Start with the squat jump.

Yassir Kahook: 20:41

Um, I think this is where Hawkin did a great job with the design of mm-hmm. The system and everything. Actually not allowing jumps to be recorded if there is any sort of counter movement because frankly you're, you're not performing a squat jump If there is any sort of braking or added velocity, downward momentum it's not a true measure of what they're able to produce propulsively.

Ryan Patrick: 21:03

Right.

Yassir Kahook: 21:03

So usually when kids or athletes can't perform that I, I move them down lower than the counter movement depth at which they're at. It, it sometimes works. And honestly, I, I'm not using this with lower level high school athletes. I'm probably starting this with college guys that know their body a little bit better. Mm-hmm. Um, and I'm getting a little more granular with the programming. So I, I, I usually start by moving them down a little bit lower if they can't not achieve a counter movement. And if that doesn't work, I, I usually take them off the plate and kind of like show them, like, I think that helps a ton too. But you're right. It, it is a hard test to complete just because the program is, is honestly, it is the way it should be in terms of throwing out the bad tests. And then speaking to the drop jump we kinda standardize the box height for our guys so everybody jumps or not jumps, steps off the same box. Mm-hmm. Um, and then we teach it as a. Straight step off and then a, a gradual fall down. And that usually takes off any of the jumping or the, like, leaning towards the plate, um, which can sway data in any which direction. And then my queue is always the same for any test. Jump as high as you can, as fast as you can. Yep. That takes away any sort of strategy that they might try to imply that'll sway you in either direction with the programming. So it, it, it also gives you a, a good effort of force. They're trying to jump as high as they can and a good effort of velocity. They're trying to do it as quickly as they can. So it kind of covers you in, in every which direction. And then I don't, I don't cue it after that. I, I wanna see what they do. So I can actually make a, a good decision based on it.

Ryan Patrick: 22:39

Yeah, that's, that's one of the hardest pieces is the turn off the coach reflex, right? Yeah. Where it's like, oh, hey, maybe if you tried this, but yeah. Um, no. Now the only time I'll cue is if we get a like, true novice, and they just, they don't, they feel like, um, when I say jump that it's like, uh, the starting gun at a track race, and they try to just, you know, jolt their body. I'm like, no, just. Spend as much as you need to. Just whatever it takes to get as high as you can. That's, that's the only time I've really found myself intervening. But I'm, I'm with you on that in terms of you can, you can easily sway a knee or hip dominant strategy with, with a cue.

Yassir Kahook: 23:14

Yeah, I think the only way that I'll intervene is maybe if I'm, I've been working with an athlete for two months. Okay. Um, and I know their, what their load looks like in the box. I know what their, you know, back leg looks like on the mound. I might try to achieve, and I'm not saying this lines up because I know it doesn't, I might try to achieve a certain depth with them. If they, you know, are trying to stay a little bit more shallow or get into their back hip on the mount, I might wanna see what that looks like on the plate in terms of what they can produce outta that position. Um, but other than that, I'm, I'm not queuing a whole ton as as to strategy.

Ryan Patrick: 23:50

Yeah, for sure. So I know we talked about, uh, youth athletes a little bit, but I'm gonna skip over this part and kind of jump into more of the force plates from the angle of a readiness assessment. Yep. I think that is, is super valuable in terms of understanding how athletes are actually recovered from a lot of the activities that they have outside of working with us and. For people listening, if you're, if you're not super familiar with how force plates work a lot of athletes can show signs of fatigue but still achieve similar jump heights. And so being able to kind of detect what's going on under the hood, I think is really valuable for making decisions. So my question yes is you know, what, do you guys look to any of these variables beyond jump height when you're measuring an athlete's recovery?

Yassir Kahook: 24:38

I, I think maybe the, the biggest one of this maybe gets missed in this, this question at a ton is system weight. It's if they're down. 12 Newtons that day. You know, you, you might wanna ask'em if they had breakfast. Mm-hmm. Um, that question has come up a ton with, with kids you know, high school age that, you know, are just coming from school and they hadn't eaten. Which could be playing into the, the momentum metric and, and onward. Mm-hmm. So that's number one. And I know that doesn't really necessarily, you know. Go into recovery, but, but at the same time it does. Yeah. Um, if they're constantly, you know, if they're losing weight or they're trying to gain weight and they, they're staying stagnant like that, that's something to look at. Um, and that should, I mean, it is the first metric. It should be the one that you kind of see first.

Ryan Patrick: 25:20

Mm-hmm.

Yassir Kahook: 25:21

Um, going off of that, I think the, the big metrics for me in terms of recovery are time to take off. Peak velocity, uh, RFD and then, um, jump momentum in there as well. Obviously, jump momentum takes into account velocity and, and weight. Um, so maybe that that's a, you know, a side one, but you know, if they're taking a lot more time to get off the plate, they might be a little more fatigue that day. Another, another one might be counter movement depth. If they're not going down quite as far one day that they might be a little bit more stiff, they, maybe they didn't go through their whole foam rolling series. Things of that nature. Yeah. Um. But yeah, how, how fast they're doing it and then, you know, how, what the exact strategy looks like as well. Again, going, going back to shape you know, if this, if the strategy looks a little bit different on a given day as well, that that could be telling you something's a little bit off.

Ryan Patrick: 26:09

Absolutely. So let's say you got an athlete coming in and man, you really, you hit home with the, the food thing because. So one of the guys that works for me, he trained with me back in high school, and he is in his later twenties now. And this is just kind of a, a side quest to, to high school kids, not, not eating and preparing all the time. So he comes in after school and he's, you know, he's training and I'm like, okay, you know, we need to talk about nutrition. I'm like, he's fading. He is not seeing results as fast as he wants. I'm like, what did you, what did you have for breakfast? And he is like, I had a, a piece of sausage. I'm like, Ooh. I am like, what is a, what is a piece of, so like, uh, like a link, a patty or, or he is like, well, you know, he is like, uh, you got those like microwavable, like sausage sandwiches, like the Jimmy Dean ones or whatever. He is like, well, he is like, my brother eats the bun, so I just eat the piece of sausage. I'm like, I'm like, bro, that's like, I'm like, that's a warmup. That's like what you eat when you're looking for what to eat, like a piece of sausage and then, you know, school lunch or whatever. So it's just totally crazy. But you know, let's, let's factor out that the kids have. Let's assume in this context we're about to talk about that they've actually, you know, have a normal amount of food and have kind of supported their nutrition to whatever extent kids do. But when you see this athlete come in, or an athlete come in and they've got this slow time to take off, they're not reaching their peak, be low, the, the rate of force development is just, it's down and you know that they're, they're dealing with some fatigue. So we've got, you know, multiple checks. One, it's not just one variable off, but multiple. How do, how does this mo, how do you guys modify subsequent training? Yeah. Is it, do you cut volume? Do you cut intensity? Do you cut both? Do you do something completely different that's more aligned with like pushing recovery forward? I'm, I'm sure context is a huge issue here, but I'd just like to hear kind of your overarching thoughts on this.

Yassir Kahook: 28:03

Yeah. So I think, you know, like you said, having context is probably the biggest thing. We operate in a bubble most of the time. You know, I'm, I'm in the private sector. I'm not in the team setting where, where guys need to be ready to go every night. Mm-hmm. Um, so we have, you know, usually we have three or four months with a guy throughout an off season. And honestly, a lot of the time I'm not really worried if numbers are down or there is fatigue because a lot of the times we're, we're trying to imply that stimulus on them. We program in four week blocks. So if, if somebody's numbers are super down and in week three, I'm, I'm not entirely worried. And, and a lot of times I'm, I'm not making an adjustment'cause I know they're probably gonna have a little bit of a deload on, on week four. Right. Um, and they're gonna trend back upwards. A lot of the times the trends look like an up and down rollercoaster throughout an off season, but if you look at the beginning point and the end point, they've trajected upward. So having context is, is first and foremost, we do get a lot of kids, you know, during summer ball and things of that nature. So if numbers are consistently down, that might be a, a telltale sign to go into a little bit of a deload or cut a set or cut reps that day. Specifically. So I, I think having context is the biggest thing. Like you said, you know, where are they at within their calendar? Mm-hmm. Um, where are we at within the program? And, and what kind of decision do we wanna make off that?

Ryan Patrick: 29:22

Yeah. Uh, stepping back even further from that, do you guys use any subjective feedback from the athletes about their perceived readiness?

Yassir Kahook: 29:32

So we don't, that's something I've played around with in the past. The, the biggest problem with us on that front, to be frank, is we have guys that come and go. We, you know, we, we might have two or three or four guys at a time that are here for, you know. A year period where we can normalize that and use that repeated, um, week to week. But a lot of the times we get guys for a month, uh, or two months or a week or one day. So a lot of the times we don't normally track that. Obviously we have conversations, I've conversations with my athletes every day on how they're feeling, how they slept, you know, things of that nature. But it's not something we track.

Ryan Patrick: 30:07

Okay. Is there a threshold where you guys will actually pull back, um, where like it's so drastic, you're just like, okay, we got it. Like. We've gotta pump the brakes today.

Yassir Kahook: 30:16

Yeah, for, for sure. Um, if, if numbers are down, um, and obviously Hawkin uses a percentage and mm-hmm. To show you the red and green arrows. If percentages are down for, you know, a a couple days in a row or a week or whatever it is, like there's gonna be, you know, some scale back of sets and reps and things like that. There's times where I've even, you know, just gone with a whole different lift for the day. And done sort of like a decompression mobility day for guys that are, you know, a little banged up and it's like, Hey, I jumped on the plate today, I'm down four inches. And I go look at their time to take off and they're up the whole 10th of a second. It's like, Hey, yeah, it's probably a, a spa day. Um, yeah. But yeah, there, there are for sure instances for that. But a lot of the times, you know, fatigue is almost, you know, something we wanna see in a sense. In terms of a, a new stimulus being put on them and their numbers fluctuating. Yeah,

Ryan Patrick: 31:08

for sure. That makes a lot of sense. A spa day. I've never heard that one. I like, I like that. I'm gonna have to steal that. We're gonna take it easy, man. We had to time, we had to time you with a sundial getting off the plate today. Like we're, we're gonna shift gears. Yeah, completely. I I wanna chat a little bit more about connecting the dots with some sports specific outcomes. So you talked a little bit about rotational power with the Proteus. Like if you see a guy who's, you know, slow, strong versus fast strong, like you're seeing this representation on the force place as well. And ultimately, like, I think we have to be a little bit weary of any of these metrics, right? Because the, the goal is to be better. At the sport, not the best jumper, not the best, the proteus, right? This so we always wanna make sure that we're translating this stuff. And so the question is, do you guys find certain plate variables or certain things that connect with sports specific outcomes? Specifically things like sprint speed, change of direction. I think you, you kind of glossed over a little bit earlier or even throwing velocity.

Yassir Kahook: 32:15

Yeah, so Throwing Gloss is obviously the one that everybody wants to know about. Yeah. We, we don't have any data on any of the ones that d directly correlate to that. Mm-hmm. In terms of, you know, jump momentum will specifically make you throw harder. Like, I, I don't think you can look at that or put that in a vacuum. Okay. Um, I think obviously as you said, like everything kind of plays into it. Mm-hmm. In terms of like connecting the dots to connecting the different machines of such if you look at somebody you know, who's very elastic but you know, doesn't produce a whole ton of force on the plate. You go to do a force velocity profile, they're, they're probably gonna be on the higher end mm-hmm. Percentile wise with the lower weights, and they're probably gonna get crushed by load. So if you put them on, you know, 12 to 14 kgs on the 10 80, they're, they're probably not gonna do very well. As opposed to the guy who has, you know, a, a much higher jump momentum, much higher average relative breaking force, propulsive force on the plate. He might do a little bit better at 14 kilos. But. You take that load off of the guy, he probably does a little bit better, um, at three kilos than the guy who, you know, has the higher braking force relative to his body weight. But maybe not as high of a peak velo on the plate. Okay. So that, that's maybe the biggest one that I see correlate. It, it does sometimes happen with the Proteus. That's obviously a machine that we're probably probably not testing a, a lot of the younger high school kids with. I, I think that is probably best for maybe kids 14 and up. In terms of, you know, getting good, you know, data that you can, you know, make decisions off of. I think it's still good to test. I, I may have misspoke. I think it's good to test kids that are 14 and down. I think making decisions though you probably wanna wait till they're a little bit or older. And they can actually, you know, put effort and force into that machine and get some good data out of it. In terms of, you know, you know, sports specific things. I, I think it might be a little bit hard to do with the force plate in terms of, in our sport, just'cause there are, so, there are so many different vectors in which, you know, guys on the field are producing force at. Yeah. Um. But the plate does help us, you know, standardize and normalize how we're looking at their trends in the weight room. Which obviously we think we, we help guys, you know, you know, produce force in the different vectors and then take it out to the field. So I hope that, does that answer that?

Ryan Patrick: 34:32

No, it's great because I think this kind of lends itself to a bigger question of, you know, if I'm a coach listening to this. And, you know, maybe I don't have access to technology. Or maybe if I, I am a coach who has force plates like myself, you know, we always want to know what is going, what do I need to improve to actually get transferred to sport? And I think that the big issue is like there's gonna be some shared variance between certain tests, right? If I see a guy's broad jump in through. I'm probably likely going to expect some improvement in their acceleration. Guys who broad jump really far are also probably pretty damn fast. Like, you know, if I see a guy jump super high, I'm like, yeah, I bet he's quick too. You know, and vice versa. But the danger can be, I think when we fall in love with certain metrics and understanding that there might be some overlap between the skill you're trying to improve. But to your point, you guys have multiple. Avenues to test things and see where these gaps in training opportunities lie and, uh, not falling in love with any specific metric or test.

Yassir Kahook: 35:41

Yeah, I think that's where maybe the metrics become a little bit, you know, hazy in terms of you could look at everything. Sure. Um, like I, my thought process as of late has been more so, you know, there, there's really no instance where I don't want the outputs to be better. I don't want. Time to take off to go down. I don't want the peak velo to go up. I, I always want that to happen.

Ryan Patrick: 36:06

Mm-hmm.

Yassir Kahook: 36:07

I think more so you have to look at what qualities do you want to test. So that's where it comes down to what tests do you actually run. Mm-hmm. Um, and that's where, you know, squat jump, like, like we talked about earlier. It's like, what exactly are you looking for? Pick a test that's gonna tell you that and then track the numbers over time. And obviously you can look at different things on the plate, but you can also look at different things on the Proteus. Like are you, are you looking at a straight arm trunk rotation, non counter movement or are you looking at it with counter movement? So that picking what you want to test is almost probably, I mean, obviously it's more important than what exactly the metrics you're tracking are.

Ryan Patrick: 36:44

Yeah, absolutely. I have a question on that note. You mentioned already several tests of, you know, their utility, uh, as trend evaluators for young athletes versus being maybe something you can use to profile an older athlete. Yep. Um, but I wanna talk to maybe more of that high school population.'cause I would imagine. Excuse me. A majority of people listening to this probably work in the private sector. They've probably got, you know, a stable of high school athletes year round and may or may not see some collegiate and pro athletes at the intermittent times, but certainly not getting them for an entire off season at the capacity that you guys are. Yeah. So with that in mind, you know, looking at these high school athletes or do you feel like there are some tests. That specifically for them are, are probably the most valuable that maybe on the flip side you're not as using as much for the, you know, elite, elite ones.

Yassir Kahook: 37:37

Yeah. So ob obviously speaking of the force plate, I, I mean we still use counter movement jump the same way we would with the pro guys that we do with the high school guys. Mm-hmm. Um, and Proteus as well. We just look at it differently. So I, I don't think, for us at least, it doesn't change any sort of the, the testing protocol. It just changes how we view it and how much, maybe how much thought we give to it when we're actually writing a program. You know, I, I might glance at a Proteus score from a, a 16-year-old. Mm-hmm. Um, but I'm not making an entire programming decision based on it. Whereas if I have a, a, a pro guy that comes back and was in AA this year, like I'm, I'm probably looking at that pretty hard Yeah. Before I make any sort of decisions. So I don't, I don't think, maybe for us at least, the, the, the testing protocol doesn't change. We try to standardize everything as best as possible. Also too, because the guys wanna be compared to the pro guys you know, they, they want to see what their numbers are against. Guys, and those are the norms that we use in our dashboard for the, the, the report sheets. Because they want to see that they, that's where they want to get to someday. So we try to standardize it as best we can so that they know where they stand. But I guess it, it probably just, the, the age is dependent on how much thought you give it when you actually go to write the program. For people in other positions. You know, I, I would probably just, you know, standardize it as best you can for your population. If you don't have access to plates, you can get a jump mat. They're a, a little bit cheaper obviously. And the output is, the output metric is the same. It's jump height, you know, everything's kind of based off of that, obviously with the plates. So, you know, using that as a metric to track over time is still valuable. Obviously you can't look at, you know, the deeper metrics or shape of the graph or anything like that, but you can still, you know, track over time what that output is.

Ryan Patrick: 39:30

Yeah. One of the, one of the arguments that I, I have a lot of times with coaches, I feel like we're always looking for the best thing, and, and there's something to be said about the. The scrutiny in the way that you're getting data from a force plate versus a jump mat. But the argument is not a lot of people need better exercises. They just need to do the things they have better. And even with a jump mat, yes. Force plates are great force plates like burtek, where you got the, you got multiple force vectors are even better. Yeah. But just having standards and having a protocol so that the data is consistent over time is still gonna. Allow you to make some informed decisions about what should come next in training. Yeah.

Yassir Kahook: 40:15

No, ma, no matter what you look at, if it gives you something relative to what you're trying to get better at and you track that over time, it's going to be valuable. Yeah. Um, so if you do a broad jump for distance and you track that every week, if you do a, a vertical jump on a, a jump mat. If you do a, you know, on a, on a vertex what, whatever it is like. It's, it's gonna give you value if you create the value and, and standardize it to the point where you can actually see progress. If it is something you're, you're not, you're trying to track and get better at, obviously.

Ryan Patrick: 40:48

I wanna, I wanna talk training floor a little bit. This just, I, this wasn't a question I prepped for you, but just kind of came to mind. So, one of the challenges, we're gonna talk rotational power and proteus right now. One of the challenges that I see with a lot of my high school guys is they want to go for super heavy med ball you know, 8, 10, 12 pounds doing some of these rotational throws and, you know, I'm trying to get'em to, to produce gas. The Proteus, obviously, you know, when you look at like, um, a counter movement shot put, throw, like the standard on that I believe is like 18 pounds. 18 pounds. Yeah. So I mean it's, it's got some sauce and obviously it's, the 18 pounds is different than the way gravity affects it, but I'd like to hear how this has maybe. How the, the advent of the Proteus has maybe modified your guys' med ball training. Is this something you use in addition to, has it replaced some of the med ball volume counting as that? How are you guys incorporating that? I'm really curious.

Yassir Kahook: 41:47

Yeah, I, I think maybe just breaking it down from a power and acceleration standpoint, it's probably easiest. Mm-hmm. So we, we do use it as a training tool. One Proteus. Um, it's, it's in programs we don't just test with it, you know, guys do counter movement, shot puts or trunk rotations or chops and lifts and stuff like that in their program as well. But dependent on whether or not, and obviously this might be, you know, a higher level thing dependent on whether or not somebody's efficient or deficient in rotational power slash acceleration. Like we could give them a heavier me ball or a lighter med ball. Um, we don't go too heavy, obviously. We probably stick in the, the four to eight range. Mm-hmm. Um, but it does dictate it a little bit whether or not we're gonna give them that eight or, you know, try to move faster, um, and go down to a four. Mm-hmm. Um, I think too, it, it could lend into some of the, you know, cable stuff we do as well. If, if they need, you know, a, a lot of rotational power, probably starting'em off on the cable machine, trying to build up some rotational strength first. And obviously this could lend in some, some of the ancor stuff as well. I think that's a super, super helpful tool to train rotational, you know, acceleration a little bit smoother and faster. Which, you know, we, we utilize as well. But yeah, we, we, we don't get too granular with it. I would say, um, maybe just from like a broad perspective, if, if they need a little bit more elasticity, rotationally versus power, um, it could dictate maybe what implements we give them in terms of training.

Ryan Patrick: 43:13

Awesome. Yeah, that's kind of kind of what we've gravitated towards. Uh, I always try to keep med balls in there because, I mean, the scale is still throwing an object and you lose that a little bit. But, you know, in the off season stuff, when we want to save the elbows a little bit, doing things like that straight arm trunk rotation or even some of those chops has just done wonders for like, allowing us to get pretty high power outputs without, you know, burning the, the elbows up.

Yassir Kahook: 43:37

Yeah, no doubt. It's a great tool for sure.

Ryan Patrick: 43:40

Okay. I know you guys are using the true strength and being a baseball facility, obviously upper body stuff is super important. Are you guys using the force plates? Like, uh, I believe it's, is it the Asher test where you do the Yeah, yeah. Like the, is T wise on there or have you kind of. May maybe not using that now that you have the true strength.

Yassir Kahook: 44:01

Yeah, we've kind of, we've kind of drifted towards the true strength and obviously the, the platform is the same. Mm-hmm. Um, the metrics you get are similar, so using that a little bit, it, uh, more for upper body stuff has been easier for us. Um, yeah. Especially because our, our training floor is very dynamic. Like we usually have, you know, at least one or two guys waiting in line to use the. Force plates at any given time. Mm-hmm. Also, throwing in a shoulder test on top of that where it might be a little more cumbersome to do is, is probably hard. Yeah. So we've, we've drifted towards using true strength solely for, for anything upper body. We also use it for lower body stuff too. We, we, we will test hamstrings, knee extension. Uh, we've played around with some like calf iso stuff as well. Yeah. Anything joint specific though, we, we, we do true strength. Okay.

Ryan Patrick: 44:51

Dang. I'm gonna have to get one. I'm gonna have to bite the bullet. Yes. What's gonna happen? You have to call Drake. I know. I'll just text him, be like, how much is this thing, Drake? Just give it. Send it to me. Yeah. Oh, geez. Okay, man. Well, this has, this has been awesome. We covered a lot of ground. I'm gonna tell you, I'm super excited, uh, to see your substack come out with the, the shape curve analysis. I think this is gonna be something that really helps inform the way that we're looking at stuff. I think maybe we have four shapes that we look at primarily. Okay. And that might be some of Daniel Bo's work. I think he wrote the, what was that book called? The Orange Cover. Takeoff. Yes. Uh, my team read that. Love that book. So if you've got force plates, or even if you don't, I think it's a great read to understand training and, and the evaluation of, of jumping. But, uh, just wanna hit you with a couple quick questions. I think I already know the answer to this, but without leading the question, if you had to pick one force plate application, uh, to truly move the needle for athletes, what would it be?

Yassir Kahook: 45:51

Counter movement Jump.

Ryan Patrick: 45:52

Yeah, it's gotta be, man.

Yassir Kahook: 45:53

Yeah, it's, it's

Ryan Patrick: 45:54

just

Yassir Kahook: 45:55

the easiest one to standardize. Everybody's done a, a vertical jump before, so, you know, you'll get, uh, quality data out of it. And then we go from there.

Ryan Patrick: 46:04

Yeah. I don't know if, if you've played with this, but you know, specific with the ISA, just to see the downward momentum of the, the center of mass and the, the guts, if you will. We've done the ha the arm wing variation, just to get kind of an exaggeration of that. Have you guys ever played with that at all?

Yassir Kahook: 46:21

Not, not as much, no. Yeah, but I, I, I do like where you're going with that. In terms of, you know, the, the height of center mass between a narrow and a wide and what you might get in the graph. That's definitely something I'm working on in terms of like a research standpoint. Nothing hard and fast yet, but I, I definitely agree. Okay.

Ryan Patrick: 46:39

Yeah. Most overrated way that you're seeing force plates used in the industry. It's hard to come

Yassir Kahook: 46:46

up with an overrated one. I, I think no matter what you do, if you test something that you want to see and get an, uh, output from, and you have a reason to use it within your, your programming, I, I, I think it's valid. I think underrated though, is shaped. And that, that, that's a huge one for me. I think looking at the shape and programming off the, the, the force time, graph shape is probably super underrated. In terms of, you know, PE people love to look at the metrics. I, I think the metrics are great. But I think the actual programming, you know, changes come through what the shape is and what an athlete's, you know, weaknesses are in terms of that.

Ryan Patrick: 47:25

Okay. I like that. And, uh, last one, I think this is. Maybe for myself as much as anybody else, but you're a sports science guy. How should we be approaching the, the magnitude of data that we have to use it responsibly and without drowning in the details or getting fomo that we're not tracking everything?

Yassir Kahook: 47:47

Yeah, I would just first have a reason for why you're testing something if it doesn't make an immediate impact to what you're giving an athlete or doing with an athlete, as we talked about in recovery. I, I don't think it's, it's useful. So, I mean, we have a, a hyper-specific reason by which, or for which what we test. Mm-hmm. Um, and there's a million things we could do with the force plate. There's a million things we could do with the Proteus and the 10 80 and all of it. I could spend hours testing one guy. But if there's not like a hyper specific reason or place in your program for which this makes a decision it, it probably doesn't have much weight. Yeah,

Ryan Patrick: 48:24

I, I can tell you I've done a number of just even like, you know, movement assessments in the past that made no distinction on how I was gonna program with the athlete. So just dropping stuff like that is always useful.

Yassir Kahook: 48:37

Yeah, I, I save that for myself to, to spend three hours jumping on the plate to find different ways to use it. But with athletes, we try to keep it as specific as possible.

Ryan Patrick: 48:46

Yeah, we've, I've tried everything, you know, we've tried the, uh, the astro test. I've tried that, like, uh, what is it, like 80 20 or 90 20 hamstring test. Mm-hmm. Yep. But that, you know, that gets a little dicey too, because it's only looking at the, the vertical force components. So if you. Dragging the plate back towards you, it doesn't get that horizontal component. So, you know, we ended up scrapping stuff like that. And honestly, the setup was a little cumbersome, but, um, yeah, maybe that's another conversation for another day, but, uh, yeah. Yeah. Um, for people who are listening, where can we find out more about you? Um, I'm definitely gonna link to your substack, but, um, where are you on the socials? Yeah, so I'm, I'm y

Yassir Kahook: 49:23

Kahoo on Instagram and, and X. And then I think just yes or kahoo on, on LinkedIn. And then performance science is, is my substack. I I try to post on there as much as possible. Um, we've got, we've got a lot of fun projects going on, so I haven't been as active as late of late. But yeah, why kahoo? You, you

Ryan Patrick: 49:40

need to know I'm waiting for these shape blocks, so they better come out

Yassir Kahook: 49:44

soon. Soon, soon, soon.

Ryan Patrick: 49:46

But

Yassir Kahook: 49:46

yeah, performance science on Substack is my blog as well. Awesome. Personally. Awesome.

Ryan Patrick: 49:50

I'll make sure I link to that. And, and definitely link to it in like my stories once we get this out. But man, this was, this was awesome. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for your time and insight. It's always good to jam on sports science'cause it can be overwhelming. A lot of us, uh, you know, we maybe struggled with statistics in college, so, it's just, it's super helpful, man. I appreciate you.

Yassir Kahook: 50:10

Yeah, I appreciate you having me on. Thank you. All right. Take care.