This week’s guest on the Pacey Performance Podcast is Ryan Grubbs, Applied Biomechanics Coordinator at the Houston Texans in the NFL. Now with the Texans after leaving Liberty University, Ryan is truly a part of the speed training ‘boom’.

He's here to talk about athlete profiling, including why coaches need to profile their athletes and how to do it for speed training. This includes the trade-off between the technical and physical information available, and the technology coaches have at their disposal in order to gain insight into their athletes’ strengths and weaknesses.

In particular, Ryan talks about load velocity programming, and how reliable video technology is for analysing an athlete in order to build their profile. Finally, Ryan gives us his advice for strength-based assessments to guide a program, including force plate testing, RSI testing and isometric work. For all this insight from a top NFL coach who’s done it all at Power Five universities, hit the play button now.

This week’s topics:

What it’s like being a part of the ‘speed boom’
Why coaches need to profile their athletes
How to build an athlete’s profile for speed training
Technical vs physical information in athlete profiling
Load velocity profile, and how to run one
Technology coaches can use to gain insight into athlete profiling
Accuracy and reliability of video for analysis
Tools available for video analysis
Strength-based assessments to guide a program

Helping athlete get fast with speed profiling: Is it a technical or physical adjustment that is needed (?) with Ryan Grubbs