What your force plate numbers mean
Jump height, peak force, RFD and asymmetry: the four numbers on your report, what each changes about your program, and which ones are worth chasing.
A force plate report has a lot of numbers on it. Four of them decide what your program looks like. This guide walks through each one, what a good and a poor value looks like for a trained athlete, and what we do in the gym when a number is low.
Jump height
The one everyone knows. It is an output: force and speed together. It tells you how much you have; it doesn't tell you what to train. We use it as the scoreboard, not as the plan.
Peak force
How hard you can push. Low peak force relative to bodyweight points to strength work first: heavy, slow, well-coached lifts. Athletes with high peak force but a modest jump have a different problem, and the same strength program would waste their block.
Rate of force development
How fast the force arrives. Sport happens in tenths of a second, so an athlete with strength but slow RFD trains power: lighter, faster lifts, jumps and throws with full intent. This is the number that most often separates the fast from the strong.
Asymmetry
Left versus right. A gap over about ten percent in a two-leg jump earns single-leg work and, if it is new, a conversation about how it got there. It's also the number that moves first when something is wrong, which is why we retest it every block.
What to do with all of it
Test, program from the weakest of the four, retest in four to six weeks, repeat. The program changes when the numbers change: that is the whole method.
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