Evidence Strong
Data-driven coaching in elite Olympic weightlifting team with Jake Slaton
daily testing, weekly testing, anything else in terms of testing, you do, do you collect any psychological data? No, we don't. I had tried in the past to use questionnaires, but very difficult for compliance, especially because I'm not there in person every day. So it was a lot of either forgetting or even worse, you know, they'd answer like an hour into their training session. But then I was there, so I had no idea like, were they already training or, you know, were they actually do it accurately before training. So in theory, I think it could be useful, but unless I was there full time. Okay, Jack, it's awesome to have you at David and Strong show. If you could briefly introduce yourself, that would be great. Yeah, thanks for having me on first off, big fan of the show. Thank you. So my name is Jake Slaton. I am the sport scientist for Power and Grace Performance. We are a US based weightlifting team. I'm also a senior research specialist at Emory University's or almost a research center and currently a PhD student at Robert Gordon University. I didn't know that. What is your thesis about? So the actual research topic, I just started this, this is my first semester, I'm doing it remotely. It is, we're planning on using a lot of the data we actually collect with Power and Grace, and ideas using a Bayesian statistical paradigm approach to some impulse response modeling and fitness fatigue models and trying to figure out ways to validate measures of training load and how you can use those to make like boutique prediction models that coaches can use. If they have a setup like we do where you can input some data and you can get some predictions and then maybe I can kind of guide nuances in the training. So but best down the road right now, it's a lot of reading and reading and literature review and writing reviews and stuff. How long will it take you, you think? I'm part-time because work but it's kind of interesting models that's in the UK so you just get done when you're done. So it could take me on fast maybe three years. If I'm slow maybe six years, I guess I'll kind of figure out as I go. It does help that new data collection is the hard part but we're just using data that I would be reflecting either way with that at least we have a Power and Grace. That makes it helps out a lot with the time scale. That sounds amazing. So I have a bunch of questions for you, prepared for today. I have questions, I prepared myself and then I have a few questions from patrons. So if there's anything you want to add at any point, please do. Could we go a little bit more in depth on your role at Power and Grace and maybe a little bit about them, the gym too at the club, how it functions, what kind of athletes are there and what the goals athletes have. So the audience have a bit of an idea what is your work environment like. Yeah, so we actually spent it out a year. We have our own space just for the team. We used to be located at CrossFit gym like a lot of weightlifting clubs are. We have our own space. So my role as the sports scientist, I would definitely consider part-time. So I'm not there every day. I am there every Saturday but responsibilities for me as far as the handling the data, analyzing kind of you know the person that does that. So setting up systems in place to make sure the data is being collected is being stored in the right place. It's being used correctly, that sort of thing. So a lot of it is not that I do is not in person. I collect the data in person. When there's testing, we do weekly jump testing, which I'm sure we'll get into in the force plates. But a lot of it is just handling the data. One of our coaches, Angela, she collects some daily jump data that I'm sure we'll discuss. And she does a great job of that and I kind of handle the analyzing the data on the back end. But as far as the club and the environment and the culture, I would say we really pride ourselves on the team atmosphere we have. So you know, we have a wide variety of skill levels. It could range from, you know, we have some lifters that competed at the 2020 Olympics, the Coca-Cola's, international team members, medalists at the national level, all the way down to, you know, people trying to qualify for like the Arnold or small, our national meets. So we have a pretty wide-ranging demographic. I would say something I think is, you know, draws the meat to our team. I think it's very cool is the atmosphere is, you know, if you're a team, you have a say team member on power and grace and you train a net HQ, you're treated the same way. It's the same job as the athlete that, you know, is maybe is just trying to qualify for the first American Open. And I just started weightlifting. It's kind of the same level of every device equal. Everybody's trying to support each other to reach their goals, whether the goal is trying to win gold medal Olympics, or I just want to learn how to correctly do a snatch. And so I think that's super interesting. And as far as the sports science goes, it's really nice that we do have a wide range of the athletes. We are fortunate enough to have some highly skilled lifters, but also having, you know, from novice to elite level, that kind of brings up the demographic and, you know, can allow for some unique analyses and to, you know, skill levels and what, what that maybe looked like. Did you say why the gym is located? Oh, the, so we are located about 45 minutes east of Atlanta, Georgia in the US and Lawrence Hill, Georgia. So we have our own spot there. It's, you know, smaller town in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia. And we also, one of our coaches, Brennan, has a gym he actually built in his barn up in upstate New York. And he has a pretty good size group of lifters. We call that a HQ North is a sub North in the States, but he actually has, you know, a good, good people that train in his barn where he has platforms and equipment and all that. He coaches in the person. That's amazing. Okay. So let's go deep into what we are here. For if you could go through first all the testing you do and how often what you do with the data and then maybe all the other data you might be collecting on the volume or other aspect. Yeah. So we do daily or before every afternoon session, we call out counter movement, jump height, hands on the hips max effort in a few reps. Our jump mat was just calculates it from flight time weekly. We collect some jumps on our, we had a set of dual force plates to collect jumps weekly every Saturday morning before training. We do squat jumps. So we drop down to 90 degree knee angle, hold that position and then jump straight up from that position and eliminating the stretch shortening cycle. And then we do counter movement, jump on the force plate as well. We also have a couple of velocity or barbell velocity tracking units. So we use perch fit units and they use a computer vision to track barbell velocity. So it's like a camera you set up in the squat rack and it kind of calculates based on bar displacement and it's a line of sight. Do you have to put any markers on the bar to get this one growing? No, no, actually you don't. This is actually pretty interesting. So for that, when I guess we can start with that, what we use that for right now, the goal is, and what I'm starting to put together is it's a newer brain of velocity unit. So, you know, validity, reliability, making sure it's consistently measuring how it should and measurement error is acceptable. But then also, you know, is it valid against more goal standard, whether that be a motion capture with the markers or if she want to consider like a highly validated vlog to use, that's already been invalidated compared against that. But with the barbell tracking, you know, we use it a lot or Spencer uses a lot for some of his athletes for prescribing mean velocities. He wants some to hit on say back squat or front squat or clean pull. I'm starting to pull all that data and look at it more from like a monitoring perspective, looking at how this may change throughout some, you know, the training cycles from mesocycle to mesocycle or macro cycle to macro cycle across movements. As far as the daily jump mat goes, the approach there is we think it'll other than just kind of like looking at a acute fatigue. So how are they looking and coming to that session compared to previous sessions? Are they kind of elevated or they depress ideas that gives us as an insight into, you know, neuromuscular function as they go that training session based off of, you know, some of the recent previous tests on the jump mat. Do you adjust based on the outcome or you just collect the data just to know? Yeah. So as far as just in training, there is, I would say it goes into part of like the decision making process that they like Spencer may make with his athletes that given day. So say he had an athlete and then his head maybe their snatches is only kind of open ended like he wants them to 92% but they're feeling good. You may let them go up a little bit or it's kind of, you know, yeah, some wiggle room. If it looks noticeable and based off of conversations with them with addition to the jump data from the jump mat and may help guide them in a decision of man, we're going to be able to work conservative or maybe you'll be like, oh, are you feeling good today? And then he might and his head be like, oh, I'm going to let them have a little bit more wiggle room. Maybe try some heavier weight. I wouldn't say it's shoes is like a hard and fast. It's like, you know, kind of like a red light green light. Like, oh, no, let's shut it down or I let's go all out. Nor do I think it should be because it's not, you know, the idea is it measures readiness. But right next is contextual. We don't even whether we say they're ready for. So it's just a small piece to the puzzle that goes into the decision making. But yeah, I would be thinking of that as more of like acute fatigue. How are they feeling on the session? And typically what it does is say you have an athlete who's like, they're like, whoa, this is like the training in the wrong direction this past week, like they're not jumping as high that may then allow say the coach or Spencer to go up to him and be like, hey, is anything going on? Are you feeling okay? Because it might be something, you know, a contextual factor outside of the gym. And it's just a conversation that you'd have an athlete that maybe you did it and you really need to know you needed a broach or they didn't, they weren't going to come to you and talk about it. But then this is kind of a conversation to, you know, maybe other things going on is, you know, kind of the way we like to use it. Just a small piece of the puzzle. Okay. So we covered readiness. So the testing, jump testing before the training session in the afternoon, then the squad right arrangement you have for prescription, say. So the athlete is trying to hit certain velocity in, let's say, front squad or back squad or pool. And could you tell us about the Saturday, the Saturday measurements, how they'll use? Yes. So the Saturday, you know, it's they're jumping once again, but they're on forced place. So you're going to get the, you know, some kinetics out of it, kind of look at the movement strategy and components of the jump. And what we use that for, and that's really the most built out of the robust testing we had thus far, because we've been doing it at this point, like consistently for a year, give or take on, you know, technical malfunctions. But we use that, I think of that as more program efficacy. So looking at, you know, say it's the first mezzo cycle and training and the goal is like more, I guess you could call it strength endurance or high perch or fear. You know, they're getting a lot of volume ideas to build up this work capacity, maybe accrue to some muscle mass, you would expect some neuromuscular function to be depressed, right? And so maybe we can look at the jumps at the beginning to end of that meso cycle and say, wow, like the concentric impulse or the peak power is depressed. So we can kind of, based off the research, assume that we gave them enough volume. And then conversely, if you're more towards like the taper close to competition, we can see if it's slightly elevated compared to say their previous point or compared to, you know, month prior. But that's more, we use that more as like, is the program working? And it's more of a, you know, macroscopic view of cycle cycle rather than just like day to day acute fatigue. Not saying I can't tell us anything about tea, but primarily to use that for seeing if the program is working, how it should for my neuromuscular mechanisms. And is there certain qualities in the athlete that maybe we're trying to enhance with training? Are we actually improving those? And you would expect to see increases in like impulse or peak force here in the squat jumper, kind of in the jump, it's kind of dependent on the athlete. So daily testing, weekly testing, anything else in terms of testing you do? No, right now that's primarily we have the four-splapes, the job mat and the velocity units. Okay, I have a question. So these are the athletes that are already on the team. If you are enrolling a new athlete, does it change anything? Or they jump in into the testing protocol you have for all the other athletes? Yeah, so they have, you know, your HQ athlete in person, you're immersed in it. So you're getting the same experience. Obviously, there's going to be a period where you're kind of learning how to do the test. So there might be a little bit of a warning curve where maybe the data isn't necessarily the most useful in retrospect. When you look back, you're like, oh, they didn't really know what they're doing. But no, they go right into it. The velocity tracking, the barbell velocity tracking, is something that's more, you know, newer athletes for probably not going to do as much just when there's a feeling of a need for more nuanced training, nuanced approach to training. So over time, it's kind of been realized that while this athlete is strong, not necessarily moving that weight quick enough. So like, you know, their velocity is kind of, you know, the same across all loads. You have an athlete that's like very, you know, they move very fast, but then their velocity threshold is not, you know, very low, like they have to move in the bar fast. So once they've been there a little bit, then we kind of integrate the velocity tracking and with them just because you get a better idea of what type of athlete they are and what needs them they have in training. But yeah, as soon as we get your new athlete HQ and you're part of our team, we're having you do the jump mat stuff, and we're having you do the force plate stuff. And then it is communicated to your coach and to you and you're part of it. Okay, do you collect any psychological data? No, we don't. I had tried in the past to use questionnaires, but very difficult for compliance, especially because I'm not there in person every day. So it was a lot of either forgetting or even worse, you know, they'd answer like an hour into their training session, but then I was there. So I had no idea, like, were they already training or, you know, were they actually do it accurately before training? So in theory, I think it could be useful, but unless I was there full time, I think that'd be all my feasible way. And even then it may still be somewhat challenging. I think some this process for scientists that kind of test that even if you're in there, Washington doing the surveys repeatedly, I get still may not be the most, you know, you may not get the most out of it that you'd like. More so psychologically, once again, I think it's more, I think, you know, when you kind of want to sign up to be a pal, like lift with power and grace, I have a power and grace coach, you're interviewed beforehand to kind of see like, maybe are you going to be a culture fit? Is this like, is this going to be a good relationship? And then all of our coaches, I feel like with all their athletes, do a pretty good job of developing their relationship where they'll very communicate to one another, or it might be, you know, in person, once again, like the jump stuff, maybe that leads to a conversation. So the psychological stuff, I would say is more of a very, you know, loose approach where it's coach talking to athlete more so than having like an actual quantifying psychological measures. Do you get your athletes to monitor or sleep or anything related to recovery? So we don't get them to, you know, a lot of our athletes do have like the aura rings or the other world that tracks like sleep, HRV, body temperature, all that kind of stuff. You know, I think that is an idea that we had kind of pissed around. You know, a lot of the athletes are a team that have those devices are also very like audit and like in touch with like the data recollectings they liked to have those conversations. They usually kind of talk to about it. And once again, still more of a subjective like, I'll have even sleeping hours, you know, all right, like that, you know, we try to be minimally invasive with like the sport science stuff with the athletes because we don't want them to like, you know, start dragging their feet or being like, I don't want to do this. And then we're effort is low. The data isn't good. And so just kind of that line of like that is their personal data being collected constantly. And we would need them to provide that to us. I think there's kind of that barrier. But I think in the future, that is a possible interest for athletes that are interested in like helping us out with that is they're the one with the devices wearing them all the time. But it could just be as easy as, you know, an athlete riding down their training log, how many hours is they got, which I think some of them do. But with all of us kind of being part time in our roles at power and grace, it's slow moving, implementing the sports science we want to implement. So it takes a little bit longer to get something built out and officially running as compared to like if I was there full time. So if we were to do that, it's probably a little bit lower on the priority list right now, like how we would take those psychological subjective measures or measures like sleep or HRV. I'm right now it's more of the ways we can use the force plate, which, you know, we have new tests we're trying to kind of figure out or how can we analyze the velocity data, that sort of thing. And with way lifting, you know, it is a unique setting for sports science because, you know, it's an individual sport and not reporting to an organization. And like, a lot you can do, you have a lot of freedom of testing as long as you're an athlete buying that sort of thing, you're not kind of constrained by team sport organization, that sort of thing. So there's like, you know, costly, you know, me and Spencer adding about different things that are possibilities, but you kind of have to keep it narrowed in. And one thing at a time, you know, they're already weightlifting and it's a long session. And then you don't want to add it much testing because weightlifting sessions can take them three hours to complete them one day. Discussions about more sporadic testing. So a few times in a year of pools on the force plates where they're actually doing clean pulls, snatch pools or squatting on the force plates, just adding to the data recollect thing, because they would already be doing those pools. And we'd just have them stand top of some force plates and, you know, it's minimally invasive. Yeah, that's true. It has to be acceptable for the athletes to otherwise learn how to get good quality data. Do you collect any data or volume or other aspects of the training? And if so, how you go about why and how then you use them? Yeah, so in Spencer is very into Excel and Google sheets. And so all of our training programs are kind of structured the same way, where it actually collects some number of reps, intensity for the Pacific lifts. Did you actually hit your goal for that week in volume or intensity? Like there's all that stuff is actually collected within the training sheets, which we don't ever get rid of. They're all sorted in our Google Drive. And I've created some sequel database where I have all of that stuff being pulled in the database so I can pull it if I need to. And that is, you know, one of the more things we're going to try to use in the near future is looking at actual parameters of training so volume and intensity and how that relates to performance. Because the idea behind all of this is to help our coaches be able to write better training programs. And the way they're going to do that is knowing how their current training programs are affecting their athletes, which we look at through our testing. Awesome. So you said volume intensity? Yeah. And so when it comes to intensity across whether it's, you know, we have intensity, we have volume, but we also have that stuff broken down for specific exercises. So squat, pulls, snatches, clean and jerks. So if you wanted to look at a more new launch, like the volume of intensity of specific exercises, we also collect that as well. So how are you, how are you preparing reporting with it? So I don't know, every month, it kind of spits out a lot. How are you doing? I want to know how you do it. Yeah. So I mean, it's the way our training works is, you know, we have a Google sheet, like say, Alex, I wrote you this training plans, 16 weeks, you have a Google sheet, and then each tab is a week. So a week one is the tab. And in that tab, it has all your volume intensity that's, that's been calculated from the training I've put in. And then week two, the same thing, week three. And then there's also a cover sheet that has like all of it from all 16 weeks. And so it's all everything you need from that training cycle. It was collected from there from when I entered the reps and sets and intensities, it calculates that obviously with a cover sheet. And then I have, you know, some code written up and pulls it from the cover sheets and puts it in one spot. So then it can be analyzed and it's more organized in like a, you know, a data frame that you would analyze where you have mesocycle, date, macro cycle, volume, whatever you need. I have a week or months or what have you. How much do you actually know and how much are you guessing and what is in there? I know bucket and what is in, I'm guessing bucket. Yeah, I consider myself kind of a data pessimist. I feel like we don't, we always don't know anything. Like even when, you know, I would say that something we consider like comp, we confidently can say this or that. I'm still, me personally, I'm still like, I don't know. Like what's the, what's the measure there's a little, you know, I'm not. So, you know, how much we know that I guess that's athlete to athlete as we collect this data because we've been doing it for a year. And to me, that's still not enough data. Like I want more data to draw conclusions and pull it understand the athletes better. We're starting to get to where, you know, specific athletes being kind of see like what, you know, when they are doing well and training, when they're moving the ball hard well, like what measures and testing are actually elevated or depressed. As far as we don't know, once again, I personally feel like everything. I feel like there's a lot we still need to learn, you know, as we build out more way of doing specific movements or using the velocity units. I feel like there's a lot there to be gained. Specifically, I think looking at continuous like time series data and kind of comparing time series curves, we yield a lot of insight into performance compared to say you perform a clean pool. We're trying to increase your velocity and say we do a hundred percent on your clean pool. If I just get a, say, it gives me a medium velocity, we don't know what part of your clean pool we actually improve. We start at some point somehow you increase mean velocity, but we are able to analyze the continuous velocity time curve. We can see like, oh, you actually did improve your velocity around the knee, which is what we were aiming for, or it could be, you know, we were trying to improve it around the knee, but really you just got better at the extension at the top. So I think that's something we don't know, but, you know, through doing way loting specific movements and using unique analyses, we'll be able to look at sport specific kind of positional improvements. How different your approach would be from athletes to athletes. We know weightlifting is an individual sport. People have different qualities, even weightlifters. How different the athletes could be and how it will inform how do you go about the analyzing or using the data? Yeah, so off the top of my head, we're actually, me and Spencer are about to put a blog out on the Power and Grace website, actually kind of answering this question. A good example would be if we have two athletes, and one is to say they are kind of producing the same amount of power, but one is definitely more like force driven, and one is more velocity driven. So one moves really fast, one brings a lot of force that isn't necessarily moving this fast. Well, you want to, they're training making it look very different. And so just thinking of squatting, Spencer may prescribe them, say the athlete that, you know, has a high, has high force measures on the force plate jumps, but their impulse is kind of low, which just may mean that they're producing a lot of force. It's just not a timely fashion. It may prescribe squats using the velocity unit that he believes will help me make up that efficiency so they can start, you know, squat in the same weights, but faster. Hopefully they'll carry it over to their weightlifting. And so the way we may measure that or kind of assess whether he is actually increasing those abilities or masking those efficiencies, as we may look at some of those metrics beforehand from, say, the jump. So see if pre to post that training intervention, they are actually increasing, say, like their concentric impulse, it may be forced, stayed the same, but impulse increased. So now they're actually producing the force in a more timely fashion, which, you know, in weightlifting, you have to produce lots of force, but you need to do it quickly, right? And so it is, you know, it's not like we have controls or it's not a randomized control trial or anything. So it's kind of hard to like very definitively say cause and effect this led to this, but over time, more data we collect, say, he does that repetitively for different athletes, we kind of get a good idea of is this actually improving them. And then you might have to say the other athlete that, you know, can move her squats very fast, very explosive athlete, but maybe their actual like maximum squatter, maximal force is not as high as you like it to be. Well, they may be getting training us more, looking at enhancing just absolute force, trying to enhance those peak for metrics. And so, you know, pre to post, we may look at did peak force and say their squat jump, the concentric peak force, do we increase it or the velocity, the mean velocity at their 80% squat, do we increase that velocity? That sort of thing. And then as we implement, say, a test perium post where they do a lean pull at different loads or snatch pull on the force plates, we can kind of once again, see how force and velocity metrics are changing, how those may be different role for say, I may have certain efficiencies, you may have certain efficiencies of the metrics I'm going to look at may then be different to see if, you know, we're actually addressing these holes in their physical makeup. Yeah, I think it will lead nicely to the questions I have from evidence from community patterns. So they are too, I will read them, so I will not mess them up. So the first one is, what are some ratios you guys found to signal an athlete needs to focus on a specific area? For example, if back squat to total clean and jerk, whatever is below something, the athlete needs to focus on. Yeah, so that's when the way I communicate a lot of this data, it's mostly dispenser, because he's the imperson coach at our headquarters, you know, we kind of have discussed their metrics where they might be efficient. And the way we look at that is we have all this data across a bunch of athletes, we kind of now start to look at where they're at in our athlete pull and see if they're kind of, you know, on the lower end on the higher end, I think specific to like the squat or clean jerk or that ratios, I think a lot of the time with a lot of our athletes, like say, it is an athlete, we like needs to get stronger needs to be able to have a higher peak force. If their backs one's kind of close to their clean or they're getting, and by clean, it's like, well, we need to increase their peak force. And, you know, coming from a East Tennessee state education, where they're all about squatting, I think that's one thing I took away from school is you can never be too strong in the squat if you're a weight lifter. So yeah, it's a lot of more so once we have, say, athletes on the data on two macro cycles, then we can kind of see where they're, they may be deficient. And we kind of compare it to athletes we have that are of a similar capabilities or a similar skill level, say, you're a athlete that's at the USA nationals, like level, you qualify for that meat. We have a lot of other athletes that we've tested that all for that. We kind of see where you're at and there's certain metrics or physical components that you're deficient in. Maybe, okay, well, I don't want to see if we can introduce these and get you closer to like, not at least the average within our athlete pool, or maybe blowing up the water like you have the highest peak force by far. Maybe we can allocate some of our training to an area of your fish up and just kind of maintain that. So I'm a lot of that is just a collection where we have enough data on the athlete where we kind of look at it compared to other athletes. Yeah. So correct me if I'm understanding, right, you look more into addressing the limiting factor and you use mainly instead of ratios within one athlete, you look at this athlete across, let's say two mesocycles, comparing to the other athletes of similar level and how they kind of, what qualities they express and what is an average for this level of athlete? Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, no, that's exactly right. So as we collect more data, we can kind of look at where they're at within the athlete pool and that may kind of tell us we're even efficient, which is obviously biased because maybe it's just the way we coach so you could all be deficient in a certain area. But I mean, a lot of it is just stuff that coaches have been doing forever weightlifting without all the fancy equipment is that our front squat super close to their clean is their pool very weak compared to their squat. And so they're like, they're not able to have enough giddy up on the bar during the pool to racket or receive it. A lot of it comes from that. But as, you know, if we were talking, say six months from now, you know, we've had the more sports specific testing that we plan on implementing, I think that may be a little bit more like finding some of those type of ready shows where we may be able to address. So looking at specifically to certain points during the snatch pool or clean pool or the squat, whether it be force or velocity, kind of looking at me, there's comparisons there that we can adjourn us and find out, oh, you know, actually, this movement of ratio around here, whereas the ones that struggle standing up a clean actually have a ratio around here. So I think that's actually a pretty good idea for the future. Okay, the second question is, how do you use data from barbell velocity in long-term perspective, both in terms of session to session and cycle to cycle? Yeah, it's actually a pretty relevant question. I, as of this week, have been pulling a lot of the velocity data bed and looking at ways we can use it. So we'll basically look at, you know, what this person is asking, how can we use it, cycle to cycle or even session to session? Because there's some athletes that basically, if they're squatting, they're collecting it on our velocity device, right? So we have all of their squats. You know, I think there's a lot of interesting stuff that can be looked at from a practical setting, actually just looking through some of the data for an athlete yesterday out exploring it. I think there's stuff as, you know, as narrowed down as exercise selection. So whether you squat two days a week in front squat or back squat two times a week in front squat once versus back squat once, front squat twice. How's that changed kind of the velocity of those lifts? Is that making it into exercise selection or cycle to cycle? Looking at the mesocycles, maybe looking at, you know, program efficacy. So you would expect after say a strength and endurance styled mesocycle, you would probably expect some velocities at a given load to be depressed because you just can't move the barbell on as fast because you're fatigued or you should be moving 75% squat faster towards the tail end when we're trying to get closer to peaking for competition. So there's a lot there. Looking at a big picture, like good weightlets and coach, it's going on to add like a tiny little puzzle piece to the entire training process. But that little puzzle piece, you know, maybe what they need to get their athlete from not on the podium to the podium or not qualifying for something, TBSA or nationals to qualifying. So I just think of it as that way, but it's definitely not just to like over take our coaches entire philosophy or ability to program. It's just when they make decisions, there's an uncertainty they have to weigh and hopefully we can decrease some of that uncertainty and kind of help them make those decisions a little more a little more accurately. Or even in terms of hypothesis testing, so this is how we the coach is planning to go about addressing some deficiencies or improving some skills in an athlete and then looking back through the data and seeing whether what he or she was planning actually happened. That can't happen without the data, especially in, oh yeah, you can't be much testing your athlete every week to see, makes no sense. So the data can be helpful in that way. Yeah, you know, and that's a it felt us a big benefit we found as far as when I am communicating this data to Spencer and maybe sometimes he may have had like kind of like an anecdotal hypothesis of like when he manipulated this training, they're variable, they've yielded like this athlete enhancing their ability like and saying they look more explosive or whatever. And now we can actually like retroactively go back and say, here's the data, you know, your assumption was correct. Or it may be based off the data. And the, I kind of talked from the data point of view, the coach Spencer and the assistants may talk from the coach point of view, the kind of training perspective. But here's the data. Here's what you prescribed to the, you may want to adjust this a little bit at this time, because you can see they are kind of falling off a little too soon. Or, you know, this is kind of athlete monitoring metrics, then kind of follow a trip and you would, that would be ideal to the peaking performance and then from there and next macro cycle, you may, the coach may be, you know, like, oh, I need to, instead of tapering off squat, set this point in them as a cycle, maybe I'm going to do it now or, you know, what have you specific to that athlete? Yeah, yeah. On that topic, could you elaborate a little bit on your relationship with Spencer in terms of how much you talk, what kind of conversations are they like relationship or sports scientists with the coach? Yeah. So, um, it helps a lot. I've known Spencer for about a decade now. Actually, met him when I got into weightlifting. And, you know, so we've been friends for a long time. So, we already have that report and that relationship, but he is also very interested in this type of stuff. He is just a very busy person. And so, I'm more embedded in this field. He's very receptive to the stuff. He's understanding that this is useful. And I think that's a huge part. If you were, say, a coach that wanted to start some type of athlete monitoring or data collection, you would probably want to have some buy-in of the other coaches that you're trying to help. And, you know, the best way to do that would be to communicate it in a way that they actually understand like, oh, this isn't contradicting me or trying to contradict me or say I'm a bad coach is trying to help me be a coach or confirm my coaching or my training prescription. And so, me and Spencer, I usually, like I said, usually I every Saturday morning, I am in the gym and I usually see him then. But, you know, if there's anything like sometimes if I'm analyzing data and something sticks out, I think it's cool and something we need to talk about, I might shoot him a text, and then he loves to shoot an active voice memo or that sort of thing. So, we're in pretty regular communication, but it does help that, you know, we had had a relationship before I was kind of in this line of work. Having the last two questions, like, for the last 20 minutes, what is your favorite color? Right. I don't know. I guess I'd say creating the it's kind of one of the power in grades colors works, but I don't know. I don't think anybody wants to hear me say like black or gray, the kind of adult. So, I would say grieving. We'll go with green as my favorite color. Also, green it is. And last question, where people can find you, if they want to get in touch or look at your work, I would say the best place to see some of the stuff we're doing is to follow the power in grace performance as to gram account. So, we try, we're trying to put up more content kind of around the score word science stuff we're doing because this might be interesting or helpful to the way of the community. If you need to contact me personally, you can buy me on Instagram at J.A. Slaton. I'm not on there very frequently, so that if you really want to contact me, I just recommend emailing me jake@powerngraceperformance.com. If you have any questions or want to chat about any of this, I will ramble with you for a long time. So, just be prepared. But yeah, this type of stuff or you want to kind of see what we're doing, see what power and grace has been work, sport science, while I recommend following our Instagram, our director of ops, Grace Jenkins, she does a good job of curating a lot of that content. We have a blog on our website, powerngraceperformance.com, where we're trying to post more or kind of like, hey, studies, how to set up data analysis framework, how to like calculate measurement error, how to set up an SOP for testing, kind of what we're doing, stuff like that that we think is interesting, but also could be helpful to other coaches that may want to collect sometimes reform data as you probably be the best of places. Excellent. Thank you so much, Jake. Yeah, no, I really appreciate you having me. Thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]