Measure THESE ATTRIBUTES To Determine Your Athletic Level
Recently, I was shooting the shizz with the coaching staff, and we started talking about how to can measure your athleticism.
Some researchers try and analyze someone’s athleticism by hooking them up to a bunch of machines, looking at biomechanics, graphs, and other overly complicated mechanisms,
Others look at things like squat, deadlift or bench…
Me?
I’ve got my own parameters to analyze someone’s athletic ability.
Three specifically.
So if you want to know how to measure your athleticism, heed the words below.
1. Hip Extension
And this is a travesty because if your ability to extend your hips is lacking… Your vertical jump, sprint speed, almost every attribute related to athleticism is probably lacking too.That includes strength and power.
Our hips are our power center for all movement in athletics. If you have trouble activating them, and extending them in an uninhibited way, chances are…
You’ll be lower on the athletic totem pole.
How to Grade
One of the best athletic movements that works our ability to extend the hips is the trap bar deadlift.
The trap bar deadlift has been shown to carryover better than any other movement to sprint speed, vertical jump, and other athletic feats. Since that’s the case, it would be the best test of your athleticism.
2. RFD
It doesn’t matter how great your hip extension ability is… If you don’t have the ability to create high levels of force rapidly, you’re just a chubby powerlifter.
Rate of force development is the speed at which you can create peak power. And it’s what’s separates an athlete who can squat 405 pounds from a powerlifter who can squat 405 pounds. That athlete can use that force from the squat and put it towards a vertical jump…
While the powerlifter is bound to the ground.
Yep… Rate of Force Development is the driving factor behind any explosive movement, and it can even support you in strength moves.
And RFD is even the driving force behind the broad jump, vertical jump, and any other explosive movement.
If you’re lacking here, you need to perform more plyometrics, you can find out how to program plyometrics in this blog post.
How to Grade
Two of the best ways to measure your rate of force development, and measure your athleticism in general, are the vertical and the broad jump.
These two movements are indicators of not only how much force you can produce, but also, how fast you can do it.
3. Relative Strength
It’s why powerlifters can’t do pull-ups,
Why strongmen can’t sprint fast,
Why the biggest, most muscular guy in your gym just can’t move his body as swiftly as you.
Your relative strength is the amount of force you can output relative to your bodyweight. And the higher your relative strength is, the less likely you’ll get injuries, the more body control you’ll have, and the more likely it is that you’re explosive, powerful, and agile.
Yep…
Relative strength is important. So important that sometimes I have my athletes take a month to work with just their bodyweight and I manipulate the movements they’re performing with tempos and other methods to excite the nervous system.
Every athlete needs a strong base of relative strength.
And believe it or not, high level strength and conditioning coaches, the ones who coach guys like LeBron James, Kevin Durant, and Steph Curry, focus almost exclusively on relative strength.
If your relative strength is lacking, you should make it a point to bring it up, so you avoid injury, increase your explosive capacity.
Want To Learn How to Improve All Three of These?
You’ve just learned three indicators to measure your athleticism, so what are you gonna do?
Work on improving them, right?
Right.
And what if I told you, you can increase all three of these attributes, while simultaneously acquiring the most aesthetically-attractive body of your life?
These guys did it.
You can too.
Question…
Can you dedicate yourself to something for 12 weeks. Something that’s been proven to work?
Good.
Because just last year I created a program that put my best methods for training athletes in a blender with the best aesthetic methods I know of.
The result?
Athlete Built: Savage.
Every person who’s gone through a single Savage workout has felt the muscle-redefining, power-infusing, athleticism-transforming effects of just ONE workout.
Imagine what can happen in 12 weeks…
Yes, trap bar deadlifts are included,
Yes, an advanced plyometrics periodization is inside,
Yep, there’s also speed work.
Enough talk…
I know you’re about action. Increase your athleticism and check it out below:
Check Out Athlete Built: Savage