A coaches eye > force plate data
Force plates are impressive.
They’re clean.
They’re precise.
They produce numbers that feel objective, scientific, and reassuring.
THEY ARE GREAT FOR INVESTIGATIVE RESEARCH.
And they are being marketed—aggressively—as the future of athlete assessment.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth that no tech brochure wants to admit:
Force plates do not assess movement competency. People do.
And they never will.
Data Without Context Is Not Assessment
Force plates tell us what happened.
They do not tell us how it happened—or why.
A force plate output can tell you:
Peak force
Impulse
Asymmetry
Rate of force development
What it cannot tell you is:
How the athlete organized their joints to achieve that output
Which tissues absorbed the load
What compensations were used to “pass” the test
Whether the strategy is repeatable, safe, or transferable to sport
Two athletes can produce identical CMJ outputs while using entirely different movement solutions. One moves efficiently. One survives the task.
The force plate doesn’t know the difference.
A trained eye does.
Movement Is a Strategy, Not a Score
Human movement is not binary. It’s not pass/fail. It’s not symmetrical/asymmetrical.
It’s a strategy—a constantly negotiated solution between mobility, stability, strength, motor control, fatigue, and prior injury.
When an athlete squats, lands, pushes, or hinges, they reveal:
How they manage joint sequencing
Where they seek stability
Which segments they avoid loading
Which tissues are doing work they were never designed to do
These are not theoretical ideas. They are observable, repeatable patterns that emerge only when you watch movement closely and often, across speeds, planes, and contexts.
A force plate captures a snapshot.
A coach captures a pattern.
Compensation Is Invisible to Technology
One of the most dangerous myths in modern performance is the belief that high output equals high quality.
Athletes are incredibly good at compensating.
They will:
Shift load away from a vulnerable joint
Use passive structures instead of active control
Borrow motion from adjacent segments
Mask deficits at low velocities that explode under speed or load
You don’t see that clearly on a dashboard.
You see it when:
A knee subtly collapses during deceleration
A pelvis rotates when it should stay level
A trunk stiffens to avoid hip motion
An athlete “wins” the jump but loses the landing
Compensation patterns are learned neuromuscular strategies—not errors in force production. They require qualitative observation, not better algorithms.
Screening Is Not an Event. It’s a Process.
One of the biggest misunderstandings about assessment is the belief that it happens on testing day.
It doesn’t.
Movement screening is not something you do before training.
It’s something you do every session, whether you acknowledge it or not.
Every warm-up rep
Every loaded hinge
Every push, pull, sprint, and change of direction
If you’re coaching and not observing movement, you’re not coaching—you’re supervising.
If you make an athlete jump on forcce plates who clearly cannot jump - you are unqualified.
Technology can support this process. It cannot replace it.
The Problem With Outsourcing Judgment
The rise of force plates coincides with something else in our industry:
A slow erosion of practitioner skill.
When coaches rely on technology to tell them what’s “good” or “bad,” they stop developing:
Visual acuity
Pattern recognition
Contextual decision-making
Clinical reasoning
The most dangerous coach of the future isn’t the one who ignores data.
It’s the one who doesn’t know what they’re looking at without it.
A force plate should confirm or challenge what you already see—not substitute for your ability to see it.
What Force Plates Are Actually Good For
Let’s be clear: force plates are not the enemy.
Used properly, they are excellent tools for:
Monitoring output trends over time
Quantifying fatigue or readiness
Supporting (but not determining) return-to-play decisions
Adding resolution to asymmetries you’ve already observed
But they are secondary tools.
They answer questions that come after movement competency is established—not before.
The Practitioner Will Always Matter More Than the Platform
The future of athlete development is not coach versus technology.
It’s coach plus technology—with the coach firmly in charge.
No algorithm understands:
The athlete’s injury history
Their training age
Their sport demands
Their psychological state
Their developmental stage
And no force plate will ever notice:
A subtle hesitation
A loss of confidence
A movement that “looks wrong” before it measures wrong
That insight comes from experience. From reps. From watching thousands of movements—slow, fast, loaded, unloaded—and learning what good actually looks like.
Force plates measure force.
Coaches develop athletes.
And that’s not changing anytime soon.
