Indicator Exercises: Know Where You Stand in Your Athletic Development

What they are:

At first glance, you are most likely wondering, “What the heck is an indicator exercise, and why should it even matter to me?” Let us start at the root of this term: indicator. Indicator typically refers to the state of something or a device which is used for measurement. Then looking at the word ‘exercises’, one can only guess what indicator exercises means. These  exercises are used as a means to get a pulse on your current athletic state or they are used as a means to track athletic development. In addition, indicator exercises can also serve as a foundation or starting point to building your program to enhance these exercise and their desired physical adaptations.

What indicator exercises to measure:

This particular segment can get very interesting: there is not a right or wrong exercise! Well let me rephrase that, there is no 100% right or wrong exercise, just exercises that would seem to be a better fit based on sport. For me as a coach, the indicator exercise will vary mostly from sport to sport. A baseball player and football player do not play similar sports, so we can denote that their training programs would be different, so one would assume their indicator exercises are different as well, correct? This is all up to the discretion of the coach or personal trainer. A football player may need to bench 300 lbs. to be successful at his sport/position; at the same time there are baseball players who may not need that type of strength but rather the strength needed for a weighted chin-up.

For instance, Joe DeFranco, a world famous trainer who has coached numerous professional athletes, has mentioned how his program contains  4 indicator exercises: box squat, box jump, bench press, and chin-ups. A different coach may use different exercises with different sports, SO WHAT! If it works for you and your program, it works for you and your program. The important thing is to identify WHICH exercises best help you as a coach determines the effect of your training program.

When to test/measure them:

There is no specific time frame in which you absolutely should test indicator exercises, yet there are common times among many strength coaches or personal trainers. For myself as a S&C coach, I would commonly test indicator exercises at both the beginning and the end of a training cycle, however long that cycle may be. At the same time, I could choose a day and tell my athletes to go for a heavy 1 rep max today; all in the mindset of using a system of measurement to see exactly where athletes stand in their development.

Wrap-Up:

As stated earlier, there is no real wrong exercise to use as an indicator exercise, there are just better fits. Regardless of your sport, age, training experience, come to a rationale of indicator exercises that work best for YOU and YOUR program; from there utilize them to monitor progress. In the end, it is vital as strength and conditioning coach or personal trainer to know what indicator exercises are, which/when to use them, and how to measure them in a way that benefits the development of your athletes or clients. Rhetorical question: how can you know if you’re progressing or not in your athletic development if there is no way to measure or quantify it? Simple answer: you can through indicator exercises. Know what exercises best correlate to an athlete's given sport, which give the best representation to your athletes development, measure it, and then aim to enhance it through programming. Happy Lifting Everyone.

References

1. DeFranco, J. (2008, September 29). Westside for Skinny Bastards, Part III: The Final Chapter. Retrieved January 31, 2016, from https://www.defrancostraining.com website: https://www.defrancostraining.com/westside-for-skinny-bastards-part3/
2. Indicator. (2015). Retrieved January 31, 2016, from http://www.merriam-webster.com website: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/indicator
3. Indicator Exercises – The Simple Key of a Good Program. (2015, May 20). Retrieved January 31, 2016,from http://jacktylerperformance.com/ website: http://jacktylerperformance.com/indicator-exercises-how-do-you-know-if-youre-getting-better/