First piece of Forceplate Data

Back in September, I had the privilege of attending the RKC to collect data on the instructors and the candidates. We used a forceplate and video to analyze the swing and snatch for everyone that was there, and a few RKC's that just came to watch the grad workout but Pavel convinced to take part. Needless to say we have a TON of data. For each 15 second test we have 3000 lines of data. Finally we are beginning to get thru the data.

One question I have always had is: If someone cannot jump well and has poor landing mechanics, how can you address this? If you work on force production, their landing mechanics limit you. What if the reason their landing mechanics are bad is because they can't produce/absorb force? Studies have shown that ground reaction forces (GRF's) vary from 1.6 times bodyweight all the way to 3.5times bodyweight depending on the height of the jump. BUT, poor landing mechanics can prevent you from increasing that load.

Now that we have that out of the way, what we are seeing are with the RKC data collection is GRF's that range from 1.5-3.6 times bodyweight - equivolent to the GRF's associated with jumping. The big difference though, is landing mechanics are taken out of the picture. For the candidates, those numbers were 1.5-3.6 times thier bodyweight. Now, we haven't had our statistician run any statistical tests on these numbers, but alone the numbers to appear to enforce the swing as a beneficial movement - but most of us already knew that.

"The Furnace"

On Sr RKC David Whitley's blog is a workout called "The Furnace". After seeing it I thought it looked like a good workout that would "refresh" the basics of the getup and swings. I took my bootcamp class thru it a couple of times. I also included it as a bonus workout in the 4-week HKC Prep manual I put together for some guys I have attending the OKC HKC on December 5th. After all of that I finally found time to put it into one of my workouts. I made it thru the whole workout with a 24kg, but my QL found time to complain the next day. It is definetly more than a bonus workout.