Testing out, monitoring in.

Periodic testing feels like science. But when was the last time a vertical jump result changed your training plan? Monitoring is what actually moves the needle.

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A few years ago I ran a testing session with a squad. Vertical jump, both double leg and single leg. I was the fitness coach. Testing felt like the right thing to do. It felt professional. So we did it.

Two results surprised me. One of the fastest players on the team jumped significantly lower than I expected. And one of the players who was more of a thinker than a speed and power player came out higher than I would have predicted. Interesting. But then what? Should I now start working on vertical jump with the fast player because his number was low? Why? He is still the fastest player on the pitch. Should I now tell the thinker to jump more during games because his vertical is good? Why? He is a thinker and the manager loves it. I looked at the results for a few minutes and put them in a drawer. Neither result changed how I trained those players. Neither result changed the manager's decisions. The session cost me time, it cost the players energy, and the data went nowhere.

That experience stayed with me. Not because the testing was wrong, but because I started asking a question I had not asked before. Is this making the players better? Will this help coaches make better decisions? If the answer is no, skip it. The honest answer is that a lot of testing is good for the ego. It feels good to see a vertical jump number go up. It looks like progress. It looks like the work is working. But it is not really helping anyone.

"We do certain things because that is how it is done. But when you think about it, a lot of the fuss is useless."

Periodic testing has become a ritual in football. Vertical jumps, Yo-Yo tests, strength maxes, sprint times. Clubs run them every couple of months at best which means you get a data point every 60 days. And when the numbers go up or down, you never really know why. Was it genuine development? Was it a bad night's sleep? Was it the fact that the player was anxious about being evaluated? The test cannot tell you. You are left comparing two snapshots taken under different conditions, months apart, and trying to draw conclusions from the gap between them.

The data almost never changes the manager's decision making. That is the uncomfortable truth that nobody in the testing industry wants to say out loud. The information ends up in a spreadsheet, compared to a previous spreadsheet, and then filed away until the next testing window. Meanwhile the season is happening. Players are adapting, fatiguing, recovering, struggling and the test you ran six weeks ago is telling you nothing about any of it. And even if you test every 20 days instead of every 60, you are still struggling with the same problems. The snapshot is still a snapshot. The gap between what the data shows and what is actually happening on the pitch does not close just because you test more often.

What monitoring actually gives you

Monitoring is different in kind, not just in frequency. Instead of a snapshot every 60 days, you are building a picture that updates constantly. Instead of comparing two isolated data points, you are reading trends. And trends filter out the coincidences. If a player's numbers dip once, that could be anything. If they dip for three sessions in a row, that is a signal. Monitoring gives you the ability to tell the difference.

The practical difference is also striking. With GPS monitoring on the pitch you can adjust the next day at the latest. With live data you can adjust on the spot. That is the gap between testing and monitoring 60 days versus 24 hours. One informs a spreadsheet. The other informs a decision.

Conditioning on the pitch

Football players need to run, sprint at high speed and change direction throughout a game. Those are the movements that decide games and those are the movements that break players down if they are not managed properly. What we need are parameters that can inform us about the volume and intensity of those exact movements across every session and every game. Tracked consistently, those numbers build a profile of each player over time. You start to see what their normal looks like. You can spot when they are carrying something; a knock, a fatigue pattern, a drop in output before they tell you. You can manage load in a way that no fitness test run every two months could ever give you.

Strength in the gym

You do not need to know a player's exact three rep max to know they are getting stronger. You just need to see the numbers go up week after week. Whether your players are working in sets of five, four or three it does not matter. If the weight on the bar is increasing consistently, the player is developing. That is slow progressive overload, and progressive overload should be part of the program anyway. Monitoring it tells you everything you need to know without putting a player through a maximal test that adds stress to an already demanding week. Leave the player alone. There is enough pressure on them already.

Sleep

Sleep is now measurable with a watch on the wrist. That changes everything. You do not need lab equipment or specialist software. You need to educate your players about what the data means, and then let them see it for themselves. When a player watches their sleep score rise over a month of better habits, they feel the difference. That is more powerful than any lecture about recovery. The monitoring creates the education.

Nutrition

Nutrition does not need to be complicated. There are certain boxes that need to be checked; approximate calorie intake, protein intake, hydration and so on. Most coaches and players know roughly what those boxes are. But are they checking them? If you monitor nutrition, even approximately, you will soon find out. And you will almost certainly discover that a larger part of the squad than you expected is not hitting the basics. Monitoring does not just collect data. It reveals gaps that no fitness test would ever surface.

"If you monitor you will find averages. Averages filter out the coincidences. And when you track the trend of the average. That is monitoring."

This is the real argument for monitoring over testing. A single data point is easy to misread. It could reflect the player's true fitness, or it could reflect what they ate, how they slept, how stressed they were that morning. A trend built from weeks of continuous data is far harder to misread. It shows you what is actually happening, not what happened on one particular Tuesday in November.

Physical performance is important. Very important. But testing is one of those areas where the industry took something useful and pushed it further than the evidence supports. The goal was never to collect data. The goal was always to increase performance to increase the chance of winning the next game, keep players healthy and develop them over time. Monitoring serves that goal. A vertical jump score from six weeks ago does not.

Yes, there are moments for testing. But you should not test unless you can test again. The biggest difference between testing and monitoring is frequency.

The more often you look, the less you have to guess. So if you are going to test, ask yourself: can I do this every week, or at least twice a month? If yes, you might have something worth working with.

Imagine a team where load is managed on the pitch, strength progresses without soreness, nutrition boxes are checked and sleep outscores the opposition. No extraordinary talent required. Just a system that monitors what actually matters.

That team will perform.

So the question is worth sitting with. What information are you collecting right now? Is it telling you what happened on one day or what is actually happening to your squad? And is it changing how you make decisions, or is it going in the drawer?

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Periodic testing gives you a snapshot every 60 days. Monitoring gives you a decision every 24 hours.

2. When test numbers go up or down, you never know if it is real development or just today. Trends tell you which one it is.

3. In the gym, you do not need to know the exact maximum. Progressive overload monitored week to week tells you everything you need to know.

4. Most squads are not hitting the nutrition basics or sleeping well enough. Track those and you are ahead.

5. Ask two questions about every practice in your program. Is this making players better? Will this help coaches make better decisions? If the answer is no — skip it.