Back in 2006 when I was completing my masters degree at ECU in Perth, I was privy to some of the West Coast Eagles sport science secrets. Anyone that has ever travelled to Perth from the east coast knows the impact travel has upon feelings of well-being and as the west coast eagles travel interstate regularly their coaches and high performance managers are always looking for ways to ease the burden to minimize the impact travel has upon their recovery and also when their players have recovered sufficiently.
West Coast Eagles strength and conditioning coach Stu Cormack used a novel method of jump testing to ascertain nervous system recovery. He would assess ground contact time and jump height. He knew that if players ground contact times were longer and or jump had decreased from their baseline they had not sufficiently recovered and would alter the player training loads accordingly.
Peak Power Output Ground Contact Time and Jump HeightWhen working with South American 100m and 200m Champion Chilean Sprinter Kael Beccera we used a similar method to monitor his neural recovery and regulate training sessions based on this data as well as RPE data and heart rate variability!
Kael Becerra winning South American Sprinting ChampionshipsAll the best,
Joey Hayes