The mic is hot and the game is on. You're listening to News for the Nation podcast by Aces Nation, where we talk about nutrition, sports performance, the journey of a student athlete, and more. I'm Claire. I'm Zach. Time to level up. Welcome back
sports fans. Today we're talking about return to play protocol, what we're calling the mods pod, so any modifications that come through training, the importance of return to play protocols, how they intermingle with what we do at ACES nations and how we can provide those types of insights to coaches from the medical staff and just connect every working part of the organization together. So Tiana and I are going to kind of discuss a lot of these different topics. And I know Tiana
is going to start us off. Yeah. So the last podcast, Zach and I talked a lot about the connections.
how we see them anyway at aces between parents coaches and athletes and today we kind of wanted to bring in the way that we work alongside the sports med staff as well to make sure that athletes are getting the benefit of the holistic approach to performance and making sure that You know we're doing our best to mitigate injury on the front end but then if an athlete does happen to get injured how we work alongside that staff in order to provide transparency to coaches through
the process and parents and also to get athletes as healthy as possible and back on the active roster. So we're going to go over all the different ways that we approach that today and the ways
that aces. supports staff in those efforts. So I guess the first thing I want to bring up is within the app, and this is done probably in a wide variety of ways, no matter if you're using some sort of technology, you're putting this in Google Sheets, or maybe you're just writing it on paper and the staff is sharing it with coaches, but In any way you do this, you do want to have transparency in that return to place
status. So, we approach this in a way where medical staff have an area of each athlete's profile or dashboard, as we call them, where they're able to go in and report on the injury and their recommendations on the status of that injury and also the protocol that they're taking to help You know get that athlete back on the field.
So this is a a report that the staff can see the coaching staff can see but also we try to break it down in a little bit of a you know quick format for coaches to reference where we have an entire table our return to play status table that's color coded that gives you a quick indication of what point in the process that athlete is so you know we can dive into this a little deeper and we can talk about how that kind of influences each status on that chart but basically you have
anywhere from red which is athletes injured and restricted and then you'll have a kind of a middle status where they're limited to some degree maybe limited contact if it's a contact sport or just limited in some sort of movement within that sport and then your green is your you know return to play But also it gives a coach an indication that they're coming off a recent injury. So this is something that they still need to be cognizant of while that athlete gets ready to kind of be
fully involved again. And we always talk about holistic approaches to training and sports performance. And so this injury status is no different where we also include kind of the mental and nutrition side of these things. So We have documents that support athletes going through their injured time and things that they should focus on in order to help their body repair more quickly.
And then we also have kind of a test for the mental side to make sure athletes, even if they have a green status and they should be ready to return, how they're feeling about that mentally in order to make sure that there's no recurrence of injury by that athlete not truly believing that they trust. that injury being repaired and being ready to go back to full play. So at this point, we'll have Zach kind of pop in here and talk about basically how he works alongside the
sports medicine staff. You know, whether that's in person, but in college setting or whether that's, you know, kind of virtually through just putting based on a status that an athlete would be in, what recommendations would be that they could be working on in order to help them return to play quickly. Yeah. So really important to work closely and get clarification if you need
it from sports med staff. So at the collegiate level, typically you get these injury reports and it has the name, the date that the injury happened, what their, you know, where the location is, what their status is from a field or like a sports perspective and then from a training perspective with me. And I mean, really you go through, I know you just listed off colors. I'll give like abbreviations that are normally there. Out normally means they're not participating
at all. Sometimes it's like NP for no participation. Then you'll have like LP for limited participation with some indications of like what those modifications should be 80 as tolerated means they're almost fully back or almost fully cleared I guess to what they would be or they're pretty close to that level Before the injury and then FP full participation. So definitely that the green light there and they can resume activity as they normally
would have beforehand. One of the things that's important, I mentioned clarity is to get exactly what you're going to be able to do or what the athlete that you're working with is going to be able to do. So communication is definitely key there. Whether that's being sent to you immediately
and given as like a... No lower body reference from sports men, but then you probably know obviously that tells you what you're gonna be able to do I really find it helpful if The information comes along and it's like Let's just say it's there's
an ankle injury on left side, right? I find it more helpful That it doesn't say no lower body than if it says you know, right leg as tolerated with stability as needed, you know, so I know that I can do some right leg training, like if you have a leg press or something machine, then you can do right leg, leg press for that individual athlete that I'm giving the example for. And then your upper body training can be almost as normal, probably not going to be standing for
a lot of stuff. You're probably going to be seated or whatever else you're using for those different
things. So I find it helpful. to have as much clarity as yes this injury may be on one side but you can still work some other things around that or it's also helpful to get like a an injury indication or a modification status that says maybe it says no axial load which means you're probably not going to have the barbell directly on your back or you know on your shoulders in the front so it's like not any load directly
being placed on your spine. And that gives you an indication that, okay, I can still train the lower body. I just need to change what exercise I'm selecting and how the weight is being experienced by that athlete. So those different things kind
of let you know what's happening. And sometimes it's going to be, this person can participate at 50 % of their normal or at the assigned capabilities of like the group right so in that scenario you you could either cut reps in half for all the sets or cut sets in half for all the exercises obviously if you've got like an odd number it's hard to cut in half so you probably on the cautious side do more than half at that point until they've you know gone a little bit farther in the return
protocol from that or as they're working through that injury, you know, because sometimes people are able to kind of work through some injuries within reason around these recommendations and these guidelines sent to you by an athletic trainer, physical therapist, whoever is in sports medicine is what our department is here. So, yeah, those are just some kind of insights on clarity as
what I'm experiencing. I do feel that generally you see a little bit more clarity and kind of insight for college settings where the sports med staff understands that the athlete could be doing things while they're injured and trust you and your expertise to execute those things
in the weight room for them. But do you notice a difference with younger athletes, especially where they, you know, get an injury and they think, oh, well, that's it for me, I have to sit out for the rest of the season, or there's nothing I could be doing in order to get better? Like, do you do you notice an age difference there? Or kind of is it whether or not they're dealing with just a general practitioner doctor
versus sports med doctor? I think that's a good That's a good topic to talk about because if you're a medical professional and you're not you're not sure who's gonna be working with this person and whether or not they're smart enough or you know, you don't you don't trust them and trust their opinion and All professional aspects you you may say for that ankle person No body because you have no idea what they're gonna do
or who they're gonna go see right? So you may want to be on the safe side professionally to do that I I Would not say that it's only high school or like not collegiate athletes that Would be like oh gosh Her my ankle can't can't do anything lower body, but then trust me. It's it's college kids, too It just kind of depends on depends on who that person is what their personality is You know a lot of people but some athletes
would be like hey, I'm fine. I can do this right And they'll try to go a little bit beyond what the recommendation is for that, which good for those people. It probably helps with their competitive drive and why they are, or why they're as successful as they are, or why they are at the level that they're at at that point. But yeah, I just kind of get there. But it also could extend the length
of that injury, right? Right, it could. Where if you're someone who's insisting that you're good to go, but you're not, I mean, that's the other end of the... spectrum there too. And I think that's when we get into more of like psychological and sociological elements that are happening at play within the sports environment and like how people view you what's your perspective on
your self -worth at that point. I think that that gets into a lot of different areas but yeah so I mean some people want to pull themselves completely out because whatever you know this and that but Man, I think it's just kind of various, but I can definitely see medical professionals just telling you not to do anything. That way there's not a chance of you having an issue and you're able to return. I think that's from a like overly cautious professional safety standpoint.
That's just what you're going to do. And how about the coaching side of that do you see pressure from coaches on either the sports med staff or you in terms of how long it takes an athlete to what they consider be ready to return I Think more that pressures on sports medicine than I've ever experienced to get someone back I'm thankful that most of the time we have baseline numbers
that we can go off of. And so we know roughly, if someone's within 90%, you know, between that 90 to 100 % of their capabilities beforehand, that they're okay to be full participation in practice as long as they've met other medical criteria or benchmarks, checkpoints along the way. Right? I mean, obviously, if we're talking to surgical like post -op, they've got to meet these different benchmarks before they're able to participate fully. You know, my career is
like, my part of that is way at the end. When someone's already gone through, you know, all the procedures and recovery visits, and I'm like way down the road, and I'm minimal at best, probably
in the beginning. Probably away away from the affected limb at that point and then I'm slowly getting into that point but So if this isn't new to someone I guess the idea that you know Say you injured like you're saying before an ankle the idea that you can train Continue to train lower body at least on the uninjured side for the time being and maybe even regular participation for upper body Are there like very kind of common modifications that you make in order to accommodate
those athletes in any particular exercise areas? Yeah, I mean in that in that case in particular I mentioned the Work you can work the other side. So let's say it's a left ankle. You can train your right leg as long as there's stability when needed so if there's a squad day you can you can still train single leg squat there. You're probably going to need something for stability. If you don't have a leg press, like I mentioned
earlier, where that's really easy to train. I guess if you had a Smith machine, like obviously that's built in stability. So you might be able to just use that. You're just going to keep that affected limb off the ground. I mean, if you're in a boot, you're going to be a little safer,
I guess. Then if you're like Wrapped up in bandages and I don't know if you're I don't know if you're training at that point if you're wrapped up in bandages because Well, I mean in my experience that's like Maybe some type of surgical procedure that's already happened and you're probably still on some type of medication If you're still on a scenario like that, you probably have crutches or whatnot that that scenario in particular maybe I'm gonna only be seated upper body for a while
if you're in that case. But yeah, if you're like in a ankle brace, you're able to kind of walk around. If you're in a boot where you can walk around a little bit, you can definitely train. Honestly, even this morning at the time that we're recording this podcast, I had somebody in a boot on crutches, but was able to single leg squat this morning. Yeah, it can still be
done at that point. That's like different modifications are gonna happen at different points and I mean I'll get into an extensive list kind of later on we get through that but yeah, it's important that we continue to train the entire body because the the nervous system gets stimulated and makes adaptations that can benefit the entire body when we train like we normally would even though we're having like a one sided or no one limb
has been affected by injury. I think that's kind of surprising to people to hear for the first time and not necessarily something that would just seem like common sense because Yes, the fact that you are actually training that limb itself and affecting those particular muscles on say the right side if your left is injured that yeah, we you can make that connection. But
what else is going on? Kind of behind the scenes of how that training is still benefiting your entire body is you know, do you want to dive a little bit more into kind of why that is? Yeah, I'll bring up my first exposure to this kind of thinking here. For all the millennials out there listening to this, my favorite M. Night Shyamalan movie is Lady in the Water. And in the movie, there's a guy at the hotel where they're all living, or a little apartment complex, whatever
it is. And he's only doing bicep curls on one side. uh and his arm is so much bigger than the other one but uh so that was my first exposure to this entire thing but yeah so there's some there's some research out there about these types of areas and uh i went in and dug in a little bit to some research within the last 10 years
about this stuff. So let me start off by saying it's really important to follow your doctor, surgeon, physical therapist, or athletic trainer's recommendations when in some type of return to play protocol. Get that clarity that you need. Maybe ask some questions about what you really do. and how you might be able to benefit or aid in recovery for that affected limb by continuing
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Visit acesnation .org to learn more and schedule a demo. Let's go! It definitely has benefits to train uninjured side, okay, and to keep training even if it's like one arm. versus being able to do both arms or one leg versus being able to go both legs. The term that's used in research is cross -education. It's the term of the transfer of adaptations to the injured limb when you're training the uninjured one. Not going to bore
everybody with a bunch of research read. Sometimes we get into a deep dive of research on some of these episodes, but just know that... In the three studies that I looked at, two of them were upper body studies, and one of them was lower body. In all the studies, they showed benefit from doing unilateral training on the uninjured side, whether that was upper or lower body. The upper body ones had more metrics because they were single studies. They definitely showed that
strength was retained. in the injured side after it was able to be mobile again. So it was immobile or they were not training that side. One of the studies they did a non -dominant versus dominant, both dominant and non -dominant, and then they have people who are the control not training at all, right? So like there's obviously some, there were strength gains seen in both sides regardless if one of them was being trained or not. That's kind of amazing actually, do you
know what the time frame was on that? Like how long that person's injury had them out of that actual lift exercise? The the one that I looked at with wrist flexion, they were actually immobilized and I think it was for like a Few but there's three times a week for six weeks. So they were immobilized for six weeks They preserved strength to an average of negative 2 .4%. So they lost strength, obviously, but the control group who didn't do it was like, they lost 20 % of their
strength versus missing 2 % of it. So, I mean, that's like 10 times the difference, obviously. Sorry, that was a strength preservation across all the contractions and the wrist flexors. But the actual strength of the non -immobilized side, they got a lot stronger, obviously, by training. So they were able to preserve a lot of those qualities in the arm that was in the cast. For the other one, it was just a training period that had a bunch of different training groups.
So not necessarily the same as being immobilized.
Showing the same things they were able to preserve strength in the side that wasn't being trained by training the other side Yeah, so I mean that was the upper body ones obviously they were a little more specific like I said and then the lower body one was really like a meta analysis where they looked at a bunch of different research studies They have four studies that assessed periodically knee function after ACL reconstruction and The one study that had significant favorable
results for unilateral training at eight weeks of the knee function So, I mean there definitely was some some positive benefits of that They did mention at the end they needed more research
of it. So I mean Didn't find a ton within the last ten years of this But obviously from what I pulled there was two upper body and one lower body So I think I think there needs to be a little more lower body research that's done and kind of shown throughout but yeah so definitely definitely benefits to continuing to train maybe you're not gaining strength in that injured side but maybe you're not starting as far back like obviously the one I told you about they lost on average
two percent of their strength on the immobilized side, I mean, that's like almost like, hey, you didn't miss out on anything. If you lost 2%, maybe that's, you know, maybe after one week of training and getting back into it, maybe that's negligible. Like it's almost like you didn't lose anything. You're not starting all the way back over versus like I lost 20 % of that strength on that side. So I think it's definitely beneficial
to continue to train like that. And like I said, a lot of these effects are not It's not necessarily about getting the results locally. Like if you've got, I don't know, you've got a shoulder issue or something like that, then you're not gonna,
like your arm's not gonna be as big, right? You're gonna atrophy and even these research studies for showing that muscle thickness is gonna decline in those areas because they're not being trained locally, but you training your brain to send these signals, is going to help the entire body get ready. So that's really where the strength benefits were preserved was by training at that stimulus and having your brain still make those
connections to muscle. So it's all neurological response that really kind of kept the strength intact. So definitely beneficial. Yeah, that's super interesting and it ties into what we've talked about in the past when it comes to central nervous system training and coordination and balance and all of the things that are going on that you may not realize are adaptations that are happening because it's not the obvious thing that you'll just, you know, okay, my quads are
getting bigger because I'm squatting. So understanding that. Just being injured doesn't mean that you have to go ahead and sit on the bench and that's all you get to do and watch everyone for months on end that there is hope of what you can be doing to still improve especially these kids were talking about that have that very high competitive drive and really. I'm looking to do you know play the next level or whatever that might look
like for them there is. Besides watching film or studying their sport in some way they can be doing something physical It just may not be exactly what they had in mind Yeah, I think a good point to that is just because you got injured I mean like unless you're gonna just quit playing the sport entirely You still have a purpose to continue to train even if that means you're you're gonna have some type of surgical procedure Or you're not you really kind of owe it to yourself
And to your team to continue train to be in a better position when you come back because obviously as i just said if you don't do anything you're definitely gonna lose strength right you're already gonna lose size because of being immobilized
if that's the case for you but. you definitely don't want to lose strength because then you're really starting way back and that's going to be it's going to make it harder for you to get back to playing at the level that you're used to if you're setting yourself so far back by not training so there are opportunities for you at that point as you mentioned like studying film like being smarter about the game or just kind of learning through others experiences or
talking through scenarios and kind of learning being better at your sport that way even though you can't full participation play. But also you don't want to set yourself back to when you get into the game You know for the first time that you're just so far behind It's gonna be even more frustrating to you at that point. That's just like I'm not where I was Well, we get that but but what are you doing to keep yourself as
close to that level as possible? And we can do as much as we want to mitigate injury in the long run, but I mean sports are inherently dangerous and May involve injury so at some point in your career there's a good chance that you know you may experience some sort of injury so being prepared mentally for that type of setback and being able to return you're not you're not gonna be alone
it's happened to other people and it's. You know it's just part of the game so i like that approach of you know being prepared to return in a way
that. Is going to be getting you back to play as quickly as possible and not causing further setbacks that aren't necessary I wanted to talk about I guess I'll go through just some scenarios really quickly of different modifications that are typically needed so most of the I Guess injury report information that I get from sports medicine is really like, I've summed it into like four different areas that I typically see. I mentioned no axial load earlier. There's also the scenario
of like upper body, one side is affected. So can't hold weight in certain positions, like can't hold it in the hand, can't hold it on the shoulder, maybe can't do any of that stuff, at least on one side. Then there's the ankle thing that we've talked about, but could also be knee, could be hip. What we're seeing like you can only train right leg or left leg, you know, like you can only train one side of somebody. And then there's seated upper body people as well.
So those are the typical four areas that I see there. So just really quickly to just give a few modifications that I would make for any of
those. squat no axial load I do like a unilateral Bulgarian split squat some type of lunge you can do something like ISO some tempo training you know eccentric ISO any of that type of stuff you could do more dynamic it just depends on where your phase is through the year if you can all hold weight in one side then maybe you just do one dumbbell if you have some way to set up some type of belt squat Ish like type of scenario where the the weight is attached around someone's
waist and then being pulled back down to the ground either by the Machine or by gravity. That's fine, too There's also the leg press if you have something like that always a good option to have Kind of already talked about right and left leg for that for bench usually if you can't barbell Or any specialty bar like that. You typically go dumbbell And if you have to go one side, you
usually go one side. I mean maybe there's some type of cable variation that you could use if you don't necessarily have dumbbells, but I mean that one's pretty easy. You just kind of stick to the one side or the other. Deadlift, trap bar deadlift. I mean that's really, if you got kettlebells, that could be a different option for you there to put you in a little bit better
position. Maybe you elevate those things if you've got some type of if you've got maybe like a lower back thing that you're you're trying to stay away from to keep your torso your chest as vertical as possible as upright as possible that's always a good thing to do too. I've had some people have like shoulder issues or wrist issues and they can only hold it with one side and sometimes we get away with that for a shorter period of
time by just doing kettlebell deadlift. Weight would be right in between your feet and I have them Hold it with their non injured side, if you will, and then just place their injured limb or injured side hand on top of the other one. So the shoulders stay square. Obviously, you're still holding it with one side, but we get a little more squared off with the shoulders at that point. So it's almost like we're holding it too. Obviously, we're not right and left side.
You can do any type of like strict start. um like it's starting on an elevated surface with like a dumbbell kettlebell like deadlift whatever the case may be for that if you're only on right or left side maybe it's a alternative like rdl or whatnot um any of the overhead pressing stuff kind of gets the same as as bench press you typically just kind of move into maybe it's machine or it's fixed some way if you need more stability. It's single sided if you can't use both sides.
Lunge is kind of the same as squat. You're just kind of working with what you can hold, what you can't, whether or not you can have the bar. Do you need the belt? Do you need to do time under tension like eccentric, isometric type of work, that thing. Rose chin -ups, same as I would say for the upper body work for pressing. You can use a band. Am I one -sided? Do I need to use an assisted machine if that's an option for me? Do I need to... Sometimes you need to
not go vertical, right? Sometimes you can't go overhead or that causes pain and you need to just stay with horizontal rowing. That's another modification that I've had to make for athletes in the past. So sometimes that's something you can do. Anytime you like do an RDL and maybe you can't do it or you've got some type of like weighted thrust. Can always opt in for like single sided. If you're only one sided, still use a dumbbell across the hips. I mean, that's probably
easier to balance than it is a barbell. RDL, kind of the same thing. Maybe you're staying one sided. You can hold the weight with both hands. That's great. If you can't, then you're finding those other ways to either go maybe it's a single arm hold. Again, maybe it's a belt type of attachment or some type of weight. Yeah, some different options there. bridging, curling, sorry, with your legs. So you're working on your hamstrings
there. That's an option for you. Med ball throws, I would kind of say the same as like, you know, the pressing stuff. Maybe it's single sided. I've had to do a lot of seated med ball throws before with athletes who may have like quad,
ankle. hamstring maybe it's a knee issue or something some type of lower body thing that's keeping them from being standing and and maybe rotating as much as we would want to for three -dimensional like sports and working in the transverse plane but been able to do some seated med ball throws to kind of combat that if you're doing Olympic weightlifting variations like clean snatch and those things aren't available to you for lower body purposes you know you're you're finding
Finding out how creative you can be, you know, maybe it's I've got two bands and I'm trying to do some squats or some small jumps that are band resistant for my single leg, you know, it gives you some stability. You obviously have to kind of know your athletes and know you're set up a little bit more for that. There are single leg jump variations that you could do if that person's advanced enough to be in that
position. Otherwise, I would say kind of regressed down to more traditional strength movements like maybe you're only going to have them do single leg RDL or a single leg deadlift, single leg squat, something like that to kind of make up for that those exposures to strength training and those stimulus is if they're not used to or ready for something as dynamic as doing a single leg jump you know with with an injury on the other side so kind of have to know your
athlete know your situation for that one but yeah other than that I guess the last thing I'll touch off I do a lot of pile -off variations for core work so I've had people with shoulder elbow wrist injuries Similar to what I talked about the kettlebell deadlift If we're doing a power off version, let's say let's say left arm left side is the injured side so When the band is on my right side or to the inside there I can hold it with my right hand and my left
hand can just be Placed onto my right hand not taking any of that band resistance just to keep the shoulder square again And then when I go to the other side, this is where it becomes tricky. So everybody try to visualize with me here This is where the band makes a loop and you put your right wrist inside of that loop so it's on the back side of your right wrist. Again left arm is injured so now we just keep our right hand
as the one that's experiencing the weight. Left hand is just placed on the right hand to keep the shoulder square but it is not experiencing or holding any of that resistance at that point. Then we just do any of our variations but most of the time when we're having to do that it usually holds. presses we do some lateral steps while holding that pile off hold position So I don't
know long -winded response there. That's that's kind of a lot of stuff and variations But definitely happy to help anybody with any modifications that feel like they need it if you if you reach out to us for sure But yeah, that's really helpful in terms of giving coaches two ideas of of ways to work around these injuries and support the performance staff in allowing them to continue
training with those types of modifications. And like you said, if you aren't sure what some of those exercises even are, I'm sure there's plenty of examples on YouTube. We have a channel on YouTube as well, so you can go type those exercises in and get an idea of what Zach was touching on there. And that's a lot about The physical side of the return to play and earlier we touched on a little bit of the mental side of that and I even think that the mental side breaks down
a couple ways as well you've got the. The kind of mental side that relates to mood so you know if you see injured athletes a lot of times they're probably kind of frustrated. or maybe upset or depressed or depending on the extent of that injury, how much time it might take them to come back that, you know, the guesswork around kind of when they think they might be able to get back that that takes quite a bit of grit to be able to withstand that type of upset and work
through that. So there are things that we provide for our athletes. in order to understand how to mentally handle some of these situations and be resilient athletes. But there's also the mental side of just trusting your body is ready to return to play. And that's a big one that we share with coaches because we think this is a tool that's
not used as much as it could be. And it gives a good indication because this test has a correlation, you know, has found a correlation between Feeling mentally ready in your body to return to play versus just the medical staff physically clearing you and saying, okay, this athlete is in our estimation is ready. That athlete has to believe that they're ready in order for that injury to not recur. I'm not saying that's like 100 % correlation
here, but. they did find that depending on the answers that students or athletes, student athletes, whatever you want to call them, gave on this particular questionnaire, there was a high correlation between a high score and feeling like they're ready to return and that being a good indication that they are really good to go and a score that indicated that they may have some doubts within themselves about their ability, say it's a ACL
injury. And they're told that they're cleared, their ACLs healed, repaired, and they feel like it's still not where they personally want it to be, to be able to play and give 100 % effort that can re -injure. So we provide, it's called the Tampa Scale of Kinesophobia, and it's a questionnaire. The athlete will fill it out. They won't see the results of that questionnaire, but That questionnaire will have a total score associated with the way
that they answered each question. And then that score would go to the sports med staff or the coaches just as an additional indicator as to how the athlete feels about themselves personally and being ready to be back on the field. So I think that's just a pretty cool and unique tool to be able to use in order to go alongside of all of the recommendations. Of course, as Zach mentioned before, you should follow doctor and sports med staff recommendations based on. you
know, what your status is. But this is just another way to get some insight into those types of things I think is a cool feature for coaches and important to feel like, for athletes to feel like they're fully supported and for coaches to feel like they're doing everything they can to make sure that that athlete is really healthy and ready to go. Yeah. And I think it's a good concept that flows, not just, let me explain it this way. So, The doctor, you've met all the benchmarks,
right? They know that by the book, right, you're able to physically do these types of things, right? However, if you don't feel as confident, right, you're not going to do them in the same way. And that may put you not where those benchmarks are. Right. So two different examples here is let's say we're lifting a certain weight. And my goal for this exercise is for it to translate
into rate of force development per power. And I know that you can physically lift this because you've already hit the benchmark of doing this movement before. So let's say it's like 70 % of your max. And I've seen you do your max. So I know you've done that before. You've marked it off. You're definitely able to do this. mentally, if you're not in the right space to have the
intent behind it. Now, I'm not saying that these are like intent in this case is the same as the other one, but just for visualization or just for an understanding, if you don't lift that weight as fast, you're not gonna get power out of it. That type of adaptation, you're not gonna get a power adaptation out of it. You lift it really slow, you're gonna get more of a... Let's say strength, right? You lifted a certain speed. It's only it's not moving as fast as possible.
You're not getting the adaptation out of it. Right. So your your capabilities are not the same. So it's not happening because your intent's not there. Right. Like mentally, you are not prepared to do the task that's being asked. Right. Another one is like sports specific. You've been in practice before. We've seen you kick a ball. I know you can kick a ball. You can move your foot to the ball, strike it and it goes somewhere and you're not, you don't get injured at that
point, right? We know you can do it. We've seen you, you know, do PK practice in there. I've seen you pass. I know you can do it at all levels, right? You get into the game, you have an opportunity to score. If you don't hit the ball hard enough, it's not gonna go, it's not gonna get past the keeper, right? If you don't hit it at the right spot, right? If you don't execute the task, with
full intent, it's not gonna be there. I mean, same way you get to this part, you may not feel as confident, but maybe you don't know it at that point because it's just, you're not exposed to it, you're not aware of it. In the last one, the last two examples I gave you, there's an outward response that tells you whether or not you're ready to do it, right? So I think it is
important to have that information. to take those things so coaches know so you're aware of like maybe something's you know still not right for me it it can give you that outward response or i guess that external response to know okay maybe there's some stuff that i need to to continue to work on here um maybe it's not physically maybe it's in other areas but yeah it's definitely a good Tool to have and it doesn't take very long to use and obviously we don't know the scoring
for you and all of this Analysis for you to be able to once they've done it here you go now you can have a conversation type of piece with With your parents if you're the athlete with the athlete if you're the parents or the coach or you know Whatever in the environment that we've talked about already To have so it's definitely a good tool to have that not many people are taking advantage of yeah and of course utilizing all of the things that lead to a proper recovery
not getting injured in the first place is where we should start for sure, but if you do find yourself in a situation where you're injured whether that's a more serious injury or maybe a minor one that's going to take you out for
a shorter period of time. Either way, utilizing a bit of all of this in all these different areas, whether it's the mental, the nutrition or the physical, all of this is going to lead to more transparency with coaches, sports med staff, and also just a more holistic, better recovery for your athletes. And hopefully that means a
quicker return to play. Yeah, definitely. So I mean, I hope everyone can take this information in and really kind of apply it in ways that they need to or feel like they've got enough to start to ask more questions to get a better hold of their scenario because as Tiana has mentioned with the app, I mean, we definitely have a lot of resources inside of that to help you stay away from getting maybe... from maybe getting injured right or delaying that process or mitigating
it you know reducing the risk there but definitely to help you in that return to play if that's the scenario that you're in when you when you come to us so i mean we definitely have the resources to help organizations or uh individual athletes themselves nice well i think that covers it today for uh injury and We hope you get out there and play and don't get injured. We've got some really fun stuff coming up here in the next few weeks, few months. So stay tuned and we'll see you next time.