If you’ve ever done a heavy set of Squats and then felt strangely fast and powerful on a jump or sprint a few minutes later, you weren’t imagining it. That phenomenon has a name: post-activation potentiation, or PAP. It’s one of the more interesting tools in strength and conditioning, and once you understand what’s actually…
Most lifters are familiar with the basics of strength training: lift heavy things, recover, repeat, get stronger. Progressive overload drives adaptation. Volume and intensity are the primary levers. This framework is correct, but it leaves out a quality that has significant implications for both performance and long-term physical function. Rate of force development, commonly abbreviated…
If you’ve ever finished a set and had no idea if you should’ve gone heavier or stopped earlier… you’re not alone. That’s where RPE comes in. You don’t need a percentage chart or fancy calculator to guide your training. You just need to understand effort and how to measure it in real time. RPE gives…
You don’t need to be a sports scientist to understand how to train like an athlete. But if you lift weights, sprint, jump, or coach athletes, you should understand the force-velocity curve. This concept explains why we lift heavy some days and focus on speed or explosiveness on others. It explains the difference between building…
The 2022 NFL Combine just wrapped up and the stat nerd in me started going through all of the testing numbers. I went through and averaged out all the numbers, by position (I also added the top performer of each drill at every position.) This is something I always liked to do to share with…
One of the questions that I get asked the most when it comes to running Catapult, especially from new coaches who have just received their Catapult units for the first time is: What exactly do you look at? Or more specifically, what metrics do you use? This is a great question because one of the…