Acceleration Performance

Women's fitness class was so 🔥🔥 we had special guest drop in!!

Cleared to return. Not actually ready.

Here's what your knee still needs before you're back on the pitch.

Getting cleared after a knee injury means your pain is gone. That's it. It doesn't mean your knee can handle a full sprint cut, a 50/50 challenge, or planting hard on a corner kick. Those are the moments that get athletes reinjured — and they happen because the neuromuscular system never got trained for them.

Your knee needs to learn how to react again. Under load. Under instability. In positions that actually look like soccer.

This is what that training looks like. And if your return to sport program skipped this step, you weren't fully ready — you just felt like it.

Save this if you're working with a soccer player coming back from a knee injury.

Quad tendon autograft donor site pain months after ACL surgery is more common than people realize. It doesn't mean something went wrong — it means the tissue is still remodeling and it needs to be managed. Before every session with this athlete, we start with heavy isometric quad contractions at a longer muscle length.

One exercise, three physiological effects: tendon analgesia to reduce pain at the donor site, neural activation to override the arthrogenic inhibition that shuts the quad down after surgery, and controlled tendon loading without the friction and shearing that comes with dynamic movement. Takes under two minutes. Changes the entire session. The details matter.

Save this if your athlete is dealing with donor site pain after a quad graft. Send it to someone going through ACL rehab right now. And follow for more evidence-based rehab and performance content.

Most coaches pick this exercise for power. That's fine. But if your athletes are slamming from the shoulder, you're adding stress to structures that are already working overtime in-season.

We train our hitters to initiate from the core — sequential spinal flexion, segment by segment, so the shoulder transmits force instead of generating it.

More power. Less injury risk. That's the point.

📍

Your liberos and your hitters have different jobs. Their training should reflect that.

Hitters generate force. Liberos absorb and redirect it — usually at a mechanical disadvantage, reaching outside their body to dig a ball that wasn't hit right at them.

This rotational partner toss trains exactly that. The ball is deliberately placed away from the body to increase the lever arm at the catch. More rotational demand. More trunk stabilization. More transfer to what actually happens on the court.

Train the position, not just the sport.

📍

The vertical jump hack for in-season athletes: stop jumping, start squatting.
The misconception: If you want to jump higher, you need to jump more. It's the industry standard, and to be fair, plyometrics absolutely have their place—in the off-season. But in-season? You're adding stress to an already overloaded system.
Research shows maximal squat strength has a strong correlation with vertical jump height (Wisløff et al., 2004). Weight resistance training improves jump performance without the repetitive joint stress of plyometrics.
Your athletes are already jumping 200+ times per week in practice and games. Their knees are taking a beating. This is when strength training becomes the smarter play—build strength in the weight room, express it on the court.
DM "VERTICAL" to learn more about our in-season training program.

Everyone talks about knee and shoulder injuries, but what about the #1 injury? Ankle sprains. They can sideline you for weeks and become a chronic issue.

​It’s time to get serious about prevention. Here are 3 exercises to build stability and protect your ankles:

​[Exercise 1]: wedge board pistols. 2-3 × 8/leg
​[Exercise 2]: tib raise. 2-3 × max reps
​[Exercise 3]: 3 cone balance drill 2-3 × 9-12 touches/leg

​Don't wait for an injury to take action. Share this reel with your teammates!

Back to the grind, but with a new level of focus. ⚽️ The comeback isn't about speed right now—it's about quality and stability. Every rep counts as we rebuild the foundation stronger than before. Post-op ACL recovery means perfecting that movement pattern and owning the ground I stand on. Trusting the process!

​