Strength and Conditioning Knowledge Center

Countermovement Jump (CMJ) – The Ultimate Lower-Body Power Test Index The countermovement jump (CMJ) is a test during which the athletes squat to their preferred depth and then jump as high as they can. The primary purpose of this jump test is to measure the lower-body power and lower limb strength. Due to being more …

Powerlifting is a sport that has gained a significant number of followers in recent years. This sport, which was virtually unknown in the 1990s, reached its peak in the early 2000s and now, in 2023, it has become a social phenomenon. I’m sure you’ve seen people in your gym performing the fundamental exercises (squat, deadlift, …

In recent years there has been an increase in the number of people going to the gym with the aim of improving their physical fitness. While it is true that this increase in physical exercise levels has an effect on people’s health, when asked the main reason for going to the gym, it is always …

Velocity Based Training (VBT) is a type of training that allows you to know how hard you are training for each repetition of the workout. VBT is a system that is not new and does not work for all sports, but, nevertheless, it helps a lot to monitor the training load and the progress of …

Velocity Based Training or VBT is a type of training that considers the velocity of execution of the sporting gesture in question. Currently, the applications that measure the velocity of execution do so in certain movements such as the squat, deadlift, bench press, pull-up or pull-up, among others. These exercises allow you to monitor the …

Barbell Velocity Tracker – What’s its Purpose? A Barbell Velocity Tracker connects directly or indirectly to the bar and calculates how far it has moved and how long it has taken to move. The use of barbell speed trackers is growing exponentially in recent years (Gonzalez-Badillo et al., 2022). The use of bar speed trackers …

Max Effort Training – What is it? Louie Simmons was an American weightlifter and strength coach. One of the most important pieces of his legacy was the “conjugate method”. The creator of Westside Barbell, he gathered all his learnings as an athlete and as a coach for his athletes to obtain maximum performance based on …

The VBT App Velocity-based strength training (VBT) is an alternative approach to strength training that has gained increasing attention (research). During VBT, training intensity is controlled by monitoring the concentric velocity of each repetition using devices designed to measure this variable. Until a few years ago, only elite athletes who could afford expensive equipment  to …

The Westside system, developed by Louie Simmons, differentiates three training methods: maximal effort, dynamic effort and repeated or repetition effort (Simmons, 2022). The difference between them is the load used, the velocity at which we move the bar and the fatigue reached, or how close we get to muscle failure. The ideal is not to …

What’s Dynamic Strength & Conditioning Training Dynamic strength and conditioning training are conducted with the objective of improving the ability to exert force repeatedly and continuously over time. Sessions include strength and fatigue endurance exercises (Wong, 1980). These exercises involve movement, unlike isometric strength training in which there is work, but the muscles and joints …

What’s The Force-Velocity Curve? In 1938, Hill reported a relationship between force and velocity in frog skeletal muscle and this formed a hyperbole (Hill, 1938). Since then, many researchers in the field of exercise physiology have been studying how strength training affects such a relationship between force and velocity (Sugi & Ohno, 2019). Gregory Haff …

Team sports make up a large part of the overall number of sports played in society. In fact, children and teenagers often focus on team sports such as soccer, basketball, volleyball, or handball, leaving aside other more individual sports such as athletics, swimming, tennis, or any contact sport. However, what children are not able to …