How Force Plate Testing Improves Sports Performance and Reduces Injury Risk

There is a lot of technology you can use to evaluate athletes. This includes GPS, sleep tracking, and heart rate monitoring. While I’ve utilized all of these, one of my favorite modalities is force plate testing. Let’s look at what it is, why it informs training plans that boost performance, and how it can also minimize injury risk. 

What is Force Plate Testing?

Simply put, force plates measure how much force you can develop (maximum or peak force) and how quickly you do it (rate of force development). I first came across them while working with coach Devan McConnell at UMass Lowell. He was utilizing them to coach hockey players in a more informed way and later extended this to other athletes. Devan showed me how obtaining measurements at each stage of the speed-strength continuum gives you a force profile that you could apply to individualize team training plans. 

Back in the day, coaches did this by measuring how far athletes traveled upward in a vertical jump or horizontally in a broad jump. Such tests are still widely used in gyms and at the NFL combine, as they give valuable insight into power and only require minimal equipment to record. Then came jump mats, which measured jump height and recorded the time an athlete spendt on the floor to show how quickly (or slowly) they could leap.  

Force plates are a big jump ahead (pun intended). They have become the gold standard of measuring how much force someone can generate and how rapidly they do so. I use a system with two plates that let me measure right and left sides simultaneously or individually. Jumping with force plates is a great way to assess how someone can express power through bodyweight movements. 

How Do Force Plates Inform Customized Training?

That’s why I started including it in my intake assessment, along with subjective wellness scores, nutrition and hydration information, training age and history, and multiple other considerations. Force plate testing provides a snapshot so that each new client has a baseline we can work against. 

Say you’re a healthy 37-year-old who’s injury free. Once you’ve used force plates, now we know the level you should be able to build upon during normal training and get back to if you’re hurt, sick, or overtrained. Or if you’re an athlete, there are years of force plate data for many sports that allow me to run an analysis and see where you are compared to your peers and where you need to be. Then I can draw up a plan to get you there.  

Force plate technology has reached the point that it’s no longer just available to pro or college teams. Expert coaches and practitioners who have a background in sport science can utilize it to provide informed and personalized coaching and preventative healthcare. While on a basic level, force plates reveal how hard you’re pushing against the ground and how quickly you’re doing so, they can also provide additional context about an athlete. For example, if someone’s scores are down, it can indicate that their acute-to-chronic work ratio has spiked too high or that their central nervous system is overtaxed and they should emphasize recovery. 

When I perform force plate testing, it’s part of a comprehensive needs analysis. It can provide a personalized range for the individual that we will try to match or exceed in subsequent training. This ensures that we’re not just putting random exercises, sets, or reps on paper but targeting the development of specific physical qualities based on current ability and future goals. 

What Kinds of Training Can I Do to Improve Force Plate Testing?

For example, if someone doesn’t develop much force, then we can focus on increasing their maximum power output. Or perhaps they generate a lot of power but take a long time to do so. In which case, we’ll try to improve how quickly they produce force. Either way, we can focus their training by prioritizing the development of one of these qualities. Then when we retest, it will show the effectiveness of our intervention. 

If you don’t produce much power, we might concentrate on hypertrophy to build muscle mass and increase force production. This can involve heavy compound lifts, like squats and deadlifts, as well as isotonic and isometric exercises. Or if testing shows you produce force too slowly, we can use ballistics and speed training to get you quicker. 

The same targeted approach can apply to other gaps along the force-velocity curve. Depending on your training age or the types of modalities you’ve used or not, you might be less able to produce force in some ways. For example, some athletes have never tried Olympic lifting, used kettlebells, or done plyometrics in a structured way. In which case, we can try introducing you to these different stimuli and see how they impact your next force plate test. Such training can help you be more well-rounded and improve overall fitness. 

How is Force Plate Testing Related to Load Management and Health Tracking?

Force plate testing can be incorporated into continual performance and wellness monitoring. Combining data from wearables like the Oura Ring, Apple Watch, or Whoop Band and subjective questionnaires that include rate of perceived exertion, soreness, sleep quality, and other self-reported metrics provides a more complete picture of someone’s response to training. It can also inform overall wellness. Force plate scores and values for other factors can be assigned a green flag if they’re good, yellow if they’re OK, and red if they’re cause for concern. I can then tweak workouts and recovery accordingly.   

Regular retesting makes force plate assessments even more useful. If we have someone use the plates again after three or six months and compare the results to their original scores, it’s easier to assess how effective their training has been, which qualities they’ve been able to improve, and those that have stayed the same during previous blocks. Then this guides what comes next. Sometimes, the training that force plate testing informs is tied to a specific metric. For example, maybe you want to improve your vertical jump or sprinting speed. Or perhaps it’s more related to the general development of more power.  

How Can Force Plate Testing Identify and Reduce Injury Risk?

If you have asymmetries or imbalances, it can negatively impact your sports performance and training. The bigger the asymmetry in the force produced by one limb, the more pronounced the issue will be. If you were generating 90 percent of the power in a two-foot jump from your left leg, then something’s going on, such as a previous injury that’s causing an overcompensation or lack of activation because of a neuromuscular issue. 

It's typical for there to be a small difference between the left and right sides of the human body. Unless you’re one of the few that’s ambidextrous, most people favor their left or right hand when throwing a ball, shooting a basketball, or performing daily tasks like brushing their teeth. Similarly, most athletes who jump off one leg prefer a left or right foot takeoff. A small difference between sides won’t make much difference, but if force plate testing highlights a bigger delta, it suggests we should investigate further. 

A customized training plan can reduce the asymmetry, focusing on the side that’s weaker with unilateral exercises, such as rear-foot elevated split squats, single-leg plyometrics, and one-leg Romanian deadlifts. Evening out the imbalance will make your body work more synergistically and increase performance. 

In addition to illuminating a potential performance deficit, an asymmetry shown during force plate testing can also be an indicator of future injury. If you’re overtaxing one side of your body and underutilizing the other, one might be subjected to excessive load while the other becomes weak and underdeveloped. Both issues can up the chances of an acute injury or a chronic one and increase the incidence of overuse conditions like tendinitis. 

The good news is that getting hurt is not inevitable, and force plate testing can inform a tailored training plan that reduces or removes the risk factor. This is where I bring in my partner, fellow coach, and physical therapist, Beth Ansley, who can also do further assessments to find the root cause of an asymmetry or imbalance and then help create bespoke programming to correct it. Force plate assessments can also be part of a post-injury return-to-play protocol, showing progress in your rehab and revealing how close you are to getting back to practice and competition. With force plate testing, increased performance and durability are just a quick jump away.    

Want to improve your performance and reduce your injury risk? Schedule your force plate test with me.