The most important part of the rehabilitation process is to have a sound monitoring procedure!

If you have followed me on social platforms you would have seen this video.

Why do you need to monitor?

Monitoring your rehab process is the most essential part of the process. Without this you are just shooting in the dark. This is the same for general training too. Both as equally important. As a coach you need to constanlty be in a reflective and refining training process. THE GOAL IS TO PROVIDE THE PUREST TRAINING STIMULUS.

For my initial monitoring I have chosen to use two single leg Isometric Strength tests. These are single leg squat derivitaves. This is because my injury is at the knee. This would change depending on other injuries as im sure you can imagine. Force plates measure the ammount of ground reaction force and is the gold standard force measuring tool in sports science. You can acheive 1000 data points per second. Therefore you can see the high level of detail that can be derived.

My results

If you have seen posts one and two you would know I had an considerable time of enforced rest. My resutls are very interesting. This is because they shed light on how important it is to have high level of detail in your return to performance training. For instance, some trainers will use ‘crude’ testing. An example of this is lifting the same weight per leg each side for the same reps. Then you must be better right? WRONG!!!

Here are my results for my tests just using Peak force in the first position.

Whilst Peak left and right forces look very similar. Where the difference lies is in the rate of force development. Which at peak is a almost a 50% difference. This is graphically represented on the right.

What decisions have I made from these results? Find out in the next blog…