☕️ S&C Daily — The Right Weight at the Right Speed

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Researchers at the University of Kansas, working directly with the school's football program, published position-specific velocity-based training guidelines in NSCA Coach. VBT uses a rack-mounted camera to measure how fast the bar moves, so a coach can prescribe load by speed rather than percentage alone. The team split athletes into "bigs" (linemen), "mids" (linebackers, tight ends, QBs, running backs) and "skills" (receivers, corners, safeties), then mapped which velocities build which qualities.

The zones:

Lead author Quincy Johnson's point is that different positions need different qualities, and those don't come from the same lifts - VBT prescribes the right weight and speed for each athlete on a given day, with real-time feedback that also flags overtraining.

NC State coach Justin Gainey says new basketball strength coach Cody Dukquits has driven "big gains" since April. Redshirt freshman Zymicah Wilkins is down about 25 pounds, Washington State transfer Eemeli Yalaho close to 20, while Kyle Evans and Darius Adams each added 10 and Paul McNeil eight.

Dukquits came from South Florida, where the new staff retained him through a coaching transition - a rarity in the business. Gainey credits the relationships: Dukquits cooks the players dinner to make sure they're eating right, and now "on Saturdays they're calling him, 'Hey, I want to get in and get a lift.'"

In a new Sports Medicine Open trial, researchers tested something most coaches never think about: how the definition of "10" on the effort scale changes the number an athlete reports. Twenty-six trained adults did isometric contractions from 20 to 100% of max, rating effort against one of three definitions of "10" - the hardest they'd ever worked in that exact exercise, the hardest in a different exercise, or the most effortful thing they'd ever done or imagined.

The definition changed the number they gave for the identical effort: ratings were highest when "10" meant the hardest that same exercise had ever felt, and lowest when "10" meant the most grueling thing they could picture doing. The bigger the mental yardstick, the smaller the number, and the gap was widest near maximal effort. The authors' point for anyone using RPE to prescribe or monitor: define your anchor, justify it, and report it the same way every time, or the numbers won't mean what you think.

In a new Sportsmith piece, Alabama men's basketball strength coach Henry Barrera makes the case for tracking internal load - not just what an athlete does, but what it costs them. Two players can run the identical session, matching on distance, sprints and jumps, yet one walks off sharp and the other is wrecked, because training status, sleep, fatigue and stress all shape how the body absorbs the same work.

Heart rate and TRIMP - a single number that blends a session's intensity and duration - capture that cost, and tracking it in real time lets a coach adjust drill intensity on the fly, spot the athletes working harder than the session intends, and catch fatigue before it turns into injury. As Barrera puts it, the grind makes you tired; strategic overload makes you better.

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