Can You Play the Game?

Is not the ultimate test of a player’s ability their ability
to play the game? You can do all the fancy and involved combine type tests and
fool yourself into thinking that there is direct transfer to the game, but there
is not.

The cones don’t move and the big bags don’t hit back. We now have a parlor industry that has developed called “combine prep”
where players are essentially training like trained seals to perform a very
narrow range of movements that appear in the various combine tests.  Some of the movements may help prepare
them for the game, but most are very specific to the tests. 

Don’t get me wrong I believe that it is necessary to have a
very specific battery of performance indicator tests to determine baseline
athletic qualities like acceleration, top speed, explosive power, Agility
(whatever that is) and functional flexibility. These should be administered in
strictly controlled environments with well-defined protocols that are valid,
reliable and repeatable. This information can be used to determine an athlete’s
baseline measures, determine progress toward specific goals and above all used to
define a training program.This is part of a sound training program with day to day coaching to prepare the player for their game.

However with the combine phenomena we have a bunch of random
tests that do not meet the criteria of validity and reliability. They are done
under vastly different conditions, on different surfaces with varied random
people administering the tests, some times are hand times, some are electronic,
there is no consistency. All of this makes comparison of scores very suspect at
best. I even question some of the scores, times and radar gun readings of
velocity I see from some of these combines. Do you know how fast 4.3 something
really is? How about 92 on a radar gun?

The bottom line here is we have another big con game going
here to take money from kids and naïve parents. If you want to get faster and
more powerful go out for track, the cool thing about that is will also learn
how to compete. Somewhere you have train for the game;
combine training is not preparation for the game.