From Theory to Practice: How Exos Is Experimenting with Load-Velocity Profiling to Optimize Training

Exos has always been the coaching company that gets people ready for the moments that matter most—whether in sport, work, or life. For athletes, this means understanding two fundamental points:

1. What specific moment is the athlete preparing for?
2. Where is the athlete currently in their journey?

Traditionally, addressing these questions required separate assessments for maximal strength, power, and speed, each demanding considerable time, space, and specialized equipment. More than just logistical challenges, these methods posed safety concerns, particularly for athletes new to structured training. When someone first starts a training program, it isn’t particularly safe to immediately place them under maximal loads while still assessing their limitations. Coaches needed a safer, more efficient approach to effectively understand athletes' capabilities and guide their performance improvements.

To solve these challenges, Exos adopted Load-Velocity Profiling (LVP). This approach didn’t appear overnight. Instead, it evolved naturally from Exos' longstanding relationship with Keiser, which began in the early 2000s when the first functional trainer arrived at what was then Athletes’ Performance in 2002. Coaches quickly noticed significant improvements in athletes—reduced soreness, greater explosiveness, and faster recovery rates.

Understanding Load-Velocity Profiling

LVP streamlines traditional methods that separately test strength, power, and speed. Starting at lighter weights and gradually increasing load, coaches track velocities at each stage, quickly and safely generating a detailed, individualized profile of the velocities at which an athlete is able to move a range of loads. This profile provides coaches with a powerful visual representation, plotting load on the horizontal axis and velocity on the vertical. By analyzing the slope of this line, coaches can clearly identify an athlete’s specific strengths and weaknesses relative to peers in similar positions and levels, directly informing targeted programming decisions.

Practical Insights from LVP

LVP clearly reveals athletes' strengths and weaknesses by visually depicting their unique force-velocity capabilities. For example, some sports (and even specific positions within sports) require more absolute strength than speed, while others demand the opposite:

• NFL offensive linemen typically have shallow profiles, effectively generating force under heavy loads but less efficiently at higher velocities.
• Sprinters typically show steep profiles, efficiently generating force at higher speeds but less effectively under heavy loads.

With these insights, coaches are positioned to determine where to target their programming in three different categories:

• Biasing strength development (for steep LVP profiles).
• Biasing speed capabilities (for shallow LVP profiles).
• Increasing training age (for profiles with low velocity, and load). 
• Maintaining strength and speed (for ideal profiles). In this case, the emphasis for the athlete may be elsewhere—such as refining movement skills on the field or focusing on energy system development (ESD) to improve metabolic qualities.

Descriptive vs. Prescriptive Assessments

Assessments generally fall into two categories:

• Descriptive assessments establish a baseline of an athlete’s current abilities, allowing coaches to track progress over time. These assessments provide a clear reference point—where the athlete stands today—so that future evaluations can measure tangible improvements in performance.
• Prescriptive assessments, like the Keiser A400 LVP, not only describe an athlete’s current state and track progress over time but also go a step further. They provide coaches with actionable insights that directly inform training adjustments at the macro, meso, or microcycle level, ensuring that programming evolves to meet an athlete’s specific needs.

LVP’s combination of rapid assessment, safety, and actionable data positions it as a uniquely valuable prescriptive tool. The LVP on the A400 leg press is particularly powerful because it provides coaches with immediate insights that allow them to tailor an athlete’s training based on what they actually need. This entire process takes approximately 10 minutes, is performed in a seated position within a controlled range of motion, and is almost exclusively concentrically focused—making it highly time-efficient and safe.

Continuous Learning and Evolution

Implementing LVP at Exos is an ongoing process driven by curiosity and a deep sense of responsibility to the athletes who trust us with their performance readiness. While we are still in the early stages of implementing the A400 leg press LVP, we are eager to refine our protocols and build a robust database of results across multiple sports and positions.

We fully expect that our approach will look very different in three years than it does today. While evidence guides the initial step into practice, expertise comes from accumulated experience in real-world application. If we look back at our training methods from a decade ago, we can see how much we have evolved as coaches, as an organization, and as an industry. Although major advancements happen at key inflection points, they are ultimately the result of countless incremental learnings over time.

As we continue to apply LVP, we recognize the significant opportunity it represents, and we are committed to making the most of it to ensure our athletes are ready for their defining moments.