Once coaches start testing with a phone, the next mistake is testing too often. A 20 m sprint every Monday sounds keen. In practice most of the week-to-week change is noise: sleep, a heavy session two days ago, wind, a slow warm-up. You end up reacting to numbers that are not telling you anything.
Testing too rarely has the opposite problem. Nobody remembers the last result, the setup has changed, and the comparison is gone.
Here is how I space tests out now.
Test when the training should have changed something
Speed and jump height do not move in a week. They move over a block of training. So I test at the end of a block, usually every four to six weeks, and again at the start of the next one if there was a break in between.
That gives each test a question to answer. Did the last block of sprint work make this athlete faster over 20 m? Did the plyometric block raise their jump or their RSI? A weekly test cannot answer that. It only tells you how the athlete felt that day.
Put test days in the calendar
I pick the test days when I write the block, not when I feel like checking. A testing week at the end of the block, same weekday, same time of day, same place.
Writing it down in advance does two things. Athletes come in fresh because they know a test is coming. And you stop the habit of grabbing a quick time whenever the session has a spare ten minutes, which is how sloppy, uncomparable numbers get into your records.
Not every number needs a test day
Some numbers come from training itself, and these can be checked every session.
Bar speed is the obvious one. If you film or import your working sets, you already get mean velocity for every rep. You do not need a separate test to see whether the bar is moving well. The trend shows up from normal training.
Reaction is quick enough to do in a warm-up, but I do not read anything into one day. Reaction times move a lot from session to session. I look at the best over a few weeks, not today against yesterday.
Sprint times, jump height and RSI are different. They need a proper warm-up, full effort and the same setup each time, so they get a test day.
A simple calendar that works
- Every session: bar speed from filmed or imported working sets.
- Warm-up, a few times a week if you like: a short reaction test, best of the reps.
- End of each training block (every four to six weeks): 20 m sprint with phone timing gates, countermovement jump, and drop jump RSI if the athlete does plyometrics.
- After a long break or an injury: a fresh baseline before you compare anything.
Use the roster to see who is overdue
With a squad, the hard part is not the test. It is knowing who missed it. One athlete was sick on test day, another joined halfway through the block, and a month later you realise they have no result at all.
In SpeedTrackr I turn on Coach Mode and keep every athlete in the Squad tab. It shows when each athlete last tested and how many results they have, so the ones who missed the testing week stand out. I can catch them at the next session instead of finding the gap at the end of the season. When an athlete beats an earlier result, the Squad tab tags it as a NEW BEST. Coach Mode works in the Android app and on the web app.
The tools behind it are simple. Two phones become start and finish gates for the sprint. The second phone can be another Android phone, an iPhone or a laptop on the web app. It is practice-grade start and finish timing: one time for the whole distance, no split times, not a fully automatic timing system. Jump height, RSI and bar speed come from video you film or import and then mark, not live analysis.
The short version
Test speed and jump at the end of each block, on days you planned. Let bar speed come from training. Read reaction over weeks, not days. And check the roster so nobody slips through.
Fewer tests, done the same way each time, tell you more than a number every Monday.
The Android app is on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.speedtrackr.reactionpro
On an iPhone or a laptop, use the web app: https://www.speedtrackr.com/auth/login
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