Stop Guessing.
Start Measuring.
Two athletes can play the same sport, be the same age, train together, and need completely different things to improve.
One may be strong but unable to express that strength quickly. Another may be explosive but lack acceleration. Another may jump well but struggle to absorb and redirect force efficiently.
You can't always see those differences by watching an athlete work out.
You have to measure them.
That's why we created the AP Power Index — a performance testing system that gives our coaches a more complete picture of an athlete's physical abilities and gives athletes a measurable way to track their development.
We test key athletic qualities, compare the results, identify strengths and weaknesses, and use that information to help guide training.
One Metric. Clear Direction. Smarter Training. That's the AP Way.
What Is the AP Power Index?
The AP Power Index is AP Sports Training's system for turning athletic performance into measurable data.
Instead of looking at one number — like how fast an athlete can sprint or how high they can jump — we evaluate multiple qualities that contribute to athletic performance.
The result is a broader picture of the athlete. We want to understand:
- How quickly can they accelerate?
- How much explosive power can they produce?
- How well can they express power vertically?
- How well can they express power horizontally?
- How reactive are they when they hit the ground?
- Where are they strongest?
- Where are they falling behind?
- How are those qualities changing as they train?
The AP Power Index brings those measurements together so we can make better training decisions.
One Number. The Whole Picture.
Multiple qualities, measured and combined into a single Power Index that tracks where an athlete stands and where they can improve.
Five Tests. A Much Bigger Picture.
A single performance test only tells you part of the story.
A fast 10-yard sprint doesn't automatically mean an athlete is explosive in every direction. A great vertical doesn't necessarily mean they have great reactive strength. Being strong in the weight room doesn't guarantee an athlete can express that strength quickly on the field.
That's why the AP Power Index looks at multiple performance qualities.
10-Yard Sprint
How Quickly Can You Create Speed?
In many sports, athletes rarely have 40 or 100 yards to gradually reach top speed. They have a few steps.
A receiver has to create separation. A soccer player has to beat an opponent to a ball. A basketball player has to close space defensively. A baseball player has to explode out of the box.
That's why we test the 10-yard sprint. It gives us insight into an athlete's acceleration — their ability to generate speed quickly from a relatively stationary position.
We're not just interested in whether an athlete is "fast." We want to know: How quickly can they become fast? That distinction matters.
Broad Jump
Measuring Horizontal Explosiveness
Athletic power doesn't only happen vertically.
Athletes constantly have to project their bodies forward — accelerating, sprinting, diving, attacking space and creating separation.
The broad jump gives us a simple way to evaluate an athlete's ability to produce explosive force horizontally. When we compare broad jump performance with sprinting, vertical jumping, strength and other measurements, we start getting a better understanding of how an athlete produces power.
The important part isn't simply jumping farther. It's understanding what the result tells us about the athlete.
Vertical Jump
How Much Explosiveness Can You Produce?
Jump height is one of the most recognizable measurements in sports performance, but we're interested in more than bragging rights.
A vertical jump gives us information about an athlete's ability to rapidly produce lower-body force. That quality shows up everywhere in sports — jumping for a rebound, exploding into a sprint, changing direction, challenging for a ball, driving out of an athletic position.
The number gives us a benchmark. Training gives us the opportunity to change it.
Countermovement Jump (CMJ)
Looking Deeper Than Jump Height
Two athletes can jump the same height without necessarily producing that jump in the same way.
That's why performance testing can go deeper than simply measuring how high someone gets off the ground. The Countermovement Jump helps us examine explosive lower-body performance and how effectively an athlete uses the rapid lowering-and-exploding movement that occurs constantly in sports.
The goal isn't to turn athletes into exercise scientists. The goal is to give our coaches better information. The more we understand about how an athlete produces force, the more intentional we can be about developing it.
Reactive Strength Index (RSI)
It's Not Just How Much Force You Produce. It's How Quickly You Can Use It.
Sports happen fast. Athletes don't always have time to load up, reset and create maximum force. They hit the ground and have to move again. Immediately.
That's where reactive strength becomes important. RSI helps us evaluate an athlete's ability to rapidly transition from absorbing force to producing force.
Think about sprinting, repeated jumping, cutting, changing direction or reacting to another player. The athlete doesn't have several seconds to produce force — they may have fractions of a second.
RSI gives us another piece of the athletic performance puzzle that traditional strength testing alone can't show us.
The Real Power Is in How the Tests Work Together
This is where the AP Power Index becomes more useful than simply writing down a handful of testing numbers. We look at the relationship between the results.
Imagine two athletes both run the same 10-yard sprint. Athlete A has excellent jumping numbers and strong reactive ability. Athlete B performs significantly lower in those areas. The stopwatch might say they're currently equally fast. Their overall testing tells us they're not the same athlete.
Or consider two athletes with similar vertical jumps. One has an excellent broad jump but a lower RSI. The other performs extremely well reactively but doesn't produce the same horizontal power. Again, the vertical jump alone wouldn't tell us that.
When multiple tests are viewed together, patterns begin to emerge. And those patterns can help us decide what deserves attention in training.
Your Strengths Matter. Your Weaknesses Matter More.
Athletes naturally enjoy seeing what they're good at. We want to find what they're not good at yet. Because that may represent the biggest opportunity for improvement.
If an athlete is already highly developed in one quality, simply doing more and more work in that area may not create the biggest return.
The AP Power Index helps us ask a better question:
Where does this athlete have the most room to improve?
That could mean developing acceleration. It could mean producing more power. It could mean improving reactive ability. It could mean building the strength necessary to support those qualities. Testing helps point us toward the answer.
We Don't Compare a 12-Year-Old to an NFL Prospect
Context matters. A number by itself doesn't tell the whole story. A 10-yard sprint time means something different depending on the athlete standing at the starting line.
That's why AP considers factors such as an athlete's:
As our testing database grows, we can build increasingly useful benchmarks that help athletes understand where their performance currently sits and what higher levels of performance can look like.
For athletes with big goals, we can also use high-level and collegiate performance standards as reference points. Not because every youth athlete should perform like a Division I athlete today — but because having a destination makes it easier to understand the road ahead.
From Baseline to Benchmark
Your first AP Power Index isn't a final grade. It's a starting point.
Testing establishes a baseline. Training gives us an opportunity to change it. Retesting tells us whether that change actually happened.
TEST → TRAIN → RETEST → ADJUST
If acceleration improves, we can see it. If power increases, we can measure it. If one number isn't moving the way we expected, that gives our coaches information too.
That last part is important. Testing isn't only useful when the numbers improve. It's also feedback when they don't.
If an athlete has been training for months but a specific quality isn't changing, we shouldn't automatically keep doing the exact same thing and hope for a different result. We can adjust.
Progress You Can Actually See
Young athletes often train for months without knowing whether they're actually becoming more athletic. They know the workouts are hard. They know they're lifting heavier weights. They know they're tired afterward. But none of those things automatically mean they're getting faster or more explosive.
The AP Power Index creates objective checkpoints.
Instead of: "I think I'm getting faster." — we can work toward: "My 10-yard time improved."
Instead of: "I feel more explosive." — we can look at changes in jump performance.
Instead of judging development entirely by how difficult a workout felt, athletes have performance data they can follow over time. That can be especially powerful for young athletes because progress isn't always obvious day to day.
Parents Get More Than "They Had a Good Workout"
Parents invest significant time and money into their athlete's development. They should have a better understanding of what their athlete is actually working on.
The AP Power Index gives parents another way to follow that development. Instead of the only feedback being that their athlete worked hard that day, testing gives us measurable information we can discuss:
- Here's where they started.
- Here's what they're good at.
- Here's what we're trying to improve.
- Here's what changed when we retested.
That makes the training process easier to understand.
Coaches Get Better Information
The AP Power Index isn't designed to replace coaching. It's designed to make coaching more informed.
Numbers don't tell us everything about an athlete. They don't measure competitiveness, confidence, decision-making, technical skill, work ethic or everything else that contributes to sports performance.
That's why our coaches combine testing data with what we see every day in training.
Data gives us one perspective. Coaching gives us context. Together, they give us a much better picture than either one alone.
Why We Retest
Testing once is interesting. Testing repeatedly is useful.
The real value of performance testing comes from establishing a history. As athletes continue training at AP, their results can create a performance timeline. We can see where they started, where they improved quickly, and identify qualities that took longer to develop. And we can compare current performance against previous versions of the same athlete.
Ultimately, that's one of the comparisons we care about most:
Are you becoming a better athlete than you were six months ago?
Training Should Create an Adaptation — Not Just Exhaustion
There will always be hard workouts at AP. But making an athlete tired isn't difficult. Give someone enough sprints, burpees and conditioning and eventually they'll be exhausted. That doesn't automatically make it good athletic development.
We want training to create specific adaptations. If we're trying to improve acceleration, there should be a reason behind the sprint work. If we're trying to develop explosive power, there should be a reason behind the jumps and lifts we're choosing. If reactive ability needs improvement, training should address it.
The AP Power Index helps connect what we measure to what we train.
That's the difference between simply completing workouts and following a development process.
The Goal Isn't a Better Power Index
The goal is a better athlete.
The numbers are simply tools. We aren't developing athletes so they can become great at performance testing. We're testing athletes so we can become better at developing them.
Ultimately, performance has to transfer to the field, court, track, mat or wherever an athlete competes.
The AP Power Index gives us measurable information. Our coaches turn that information into training. The athlete puts in the work. Then we measure again.
Find Out What You Need to Work On
You don't need another random workout. You need to know what will actually move you forward. The AP Power Index gives athletes and coaches a starting point for answering that question.
Find your strengths.
Expose your weaknesses.
Train with purpose.
Measure the change.
One Metric. Clear Direction. Smarter Training. That's the AP Way.