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Good morning. Why chronological age misleads when you're judging young athletes, the single number one program uses to rank athleticism, and a fresh look at whether polyphenol supplements actually aid recovery. Let's get into it…
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📸 Power Lift
In a new Sportsmith piece, practitioners David Johnson and Rich Kite lay out why two kids the same age can be years apart biologically - and why that matters for how you pick and train them.
The details:
Early maturers dominate on strength, speed, and power in adolescence, but the edge is usually temporary
Judging by age alone risks deselecting late-maturing talent - and letting early maturers coast on size instead of building real skill
Bio-banding groups athletes by maturity status, not birthday, so both groups get the right challenge
A practical way to estimate maturity without X-rays: percentage of predicted adult height (the growth spurt kicks off around 85%, peak height velocity around 90%)
Rich Burnett is a 16-year S&C coach - now Director of Athletic Development at Triple F, where he leads NFL Combine training - and the founder of Plyomat. He built his entire performance platform himself, with AI. This Sunday he's on The AI Playbook, sharing what he's learned building real software as a coach - and how you can start doing the same.
Then he takes it all the way: Rich's 6-week cohort teaches coaches to build their own assessment system from scratch. Starts July 17 - 30 seats, and they're going. Join the July Cohort
AI Playbook members will get a $100-off code to Rich's cohort in Sunday's edition. Join the AI Playbook
A Sanford Health feature broke down Sanford SCORE, a testing system its strength staff has used for over a decade to fold four tests - 20-yard sprint, pro-agility shuttle, vertical jump, and broad jump - into a single athleticism number. Run more than 24,000 times across 10,000+ athletes, it drops results into a database so athletes can track progress and stack up against peers by age, weight, and even retired NFL vets.
Lead sports scientist Jason Dorman is blunt about the appeal: "Kids like to see numbers." The staff is careful that the score is a byproduct of getting better, not the goal - clear 600 and you join the "600 Club," shirt included.
In a new Experimental Physiology review, Glyn Howatson and Tom Clifford dig into how polyphenol supplements - think tart cherry - actually work for recovery and performance.
Their nuance: the benefits are usually chalked up to antioxidant action, but polyphenols probably don't act as antioxidants in the body. More likely they nudge signaling pathways (Nrf2 and NF-κB) that calm inflammation and boost the body's own antioxidant defenses, and may lift mitochondrial biogenesis and fat oxidation. The catch: effects look strong in a dish but stay inconsistent in humans, largely because most polyphenols are poorly absorbed.
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