Velocity-Based Training in Practice

Introduction to the author

My name is Alexander Eriksson. I love getting under the bar myself but also standing behind the platform and coaching lifters to reach their goals. For over a decade, I’ve competed in powerlifting at the international level. I have won multiple European titles as both a Junior and Open lifter. The peak of my accomplishment includes a World Champion title in 2021 and a World Open Equipped Bench record. But most importantly, every time I step up on the platform, I get just as excited as if it were my first competition.

My passion for the sport extends beyond my accomplishments. During my years, I’ve guided, coached and empowered lifters of all levels to reach their full potential. My team of athletes have won dozens of international medals, and at the recent Swedish Nationals, the AE Power Team dominated the competition, bringing home four gold medals and sweeping the male and female best lifter awards.

As a coach, I’ve always been curious to explore new ways of structuring training for my athletes to reach their goals in the most efficient way. For the past years, Velocity Tracking and Velocity Based Training has been an important tool for parts of my team. It has helped lifters develop self-awareness and confidence in their ability. Furthermore, it has helped us tweak training to get the most out of each training and avoid injury.

In this article, I will share some of those athletes' stories and then guide you on how to get started with velocity-based training.

Athlete stories

Gustav Hedlund took his squat to another level. Gustav is a renowned powerlifter with a personal best total of 880kg in the -93kg weight class. This man has work effort, to say the least, and our biggest struggle has been to manage volume and avoid fatigue. We handled this by introducing velocity drops and velocity floors to autoregulate training volume and load. This has helped us keep momentum and break a new personal record of 320kg at his latest competition.

Stina autoregulated her training around injuries. Stina competes at the international level but has, throughout her career, struggled with reoccurring back issues. Although kept under control, we must be mindful of which load we put on the bar. Lighter weights tend to work better. Therefore, we do a lot of work at a fixed % with velocity drops to get sufficient training volume without aggravating her back issues.

Matilda got the feedback needed to put more force into the bar. Sometimes when doing volume work, it’s hard to put all your efforts into each and every rep. But thanks to velocity feedback, Matilda finds that extra drive into each rep and set. Which will ultimately pay off in the end.

All of these are experienced competitive powerlifters where we have found their way of using velocity-based training as a tool to break through plateaus or find new ways of structuring training. But beginners may benefit from velocity-based training as well. The focus for beginners should mainly be on building a solid strength and technique foundation and following the principles of gradually increasing the training load over time. Direct feedback may help beginners with their weight selection and make sure they keep on progressing.

How to get started - 3 steps to getting started with Velocity Tracking as a lifter

What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? How heavy is a 0.35 m/s? These are both important questions for a king to know. (Monthy Python joke…)

Before getting started with Velocity Based Training, we want to (1) familiarize ourselves with the tool. Then (2) determine your velocity pattern. Finally, you are ready to (3) utilize the tool in training for measuring and monitoring, autoregulating, and/or getting direct feedback.

1. Familiarization – during this phase, the athlete and/or coach simply train as normal but measures and monitors speed at different weight and exertion levels. This allows the lifter to continue having their training momentum and not put too much thought into the numbers. The aim of the period is to get a general understanding of what velocity you have at light weights, heavy weights, and when you get closer to failure.

2. Determine Velocity pattern – when you are familiarized with velocity tracking and have a good training flow, it’s time to calculate your velocity pattern. For each lift of interest, do the following:

   a) Daily 1RM test. Track your velocity working up to a 1RM.

   b) 85% reps test. Do as many reps as possible at 85% of your daily 1RM, and note the velocity for each rep.

   c) 70% reps test. Do as many reps as possible at 70% of your daily 1RM, and note the velocity for each rep.

Using this data, you can create your Velocity & % Curve and Velocity & Exertion curve. You can download this tool to calculate your curve here.

3. Utilize – Now you have familiarized yourself with velocity tracking, and should be able to use the tool to plan your training. In the next section, I will walk through several ways to use the tool in the gym for autoregulating and monitoring your training.

Getting the most out of the Velocity Based Training

Direct Feedback

This is something I find particularly useful for beginner lifters with less bodily self-awareness. As a beginner, it’s often hard to gauge if your max is 5 or 15 kg away. Or if you have 1 or 5 reps left. Bringing in direct feedback from a velocity tracker may help load the right weight on the bar or perform the right number of sets.

And for more experienced lifters. Imagine someone sitting on your shoulder each and every rep and shouting, “you can do this faster!”. That’s what velocity feedback can provide. If you know your individual velocity pattern and how fast a certain weight “should” move, you can use this to put as much intent and effort into each rep as possible. Some days this might be just what you need to get the most out of a session.

Measure and monitor

To know what works in training, you will need some kind of proxy for performance. Objective measures such as the 1RM test and rep test give you a good indication but are also fatiguing and impractical to do frequently. Therefore many lifters use subjective measurements such as E1RM based on RPE or just their gut feeling. This is more practical but less accurate. Velocity tracking brings the best of both. It’s a convenient way of objectively assessing where you are without exerting yourself.

When you have developed your own Velocity and %/RPE curve above, you can benchmark every session to each other and see how you develop over time.

The tool may also be used to predict performance before a competition.

Autoregulate

Depending on your recent training and recovery you may come into each session with different degrees of readiness. Autoregulation is the practice of adjusting training load and/or volume to fit that daily readiness. The below curve illustrates how your daily 1 rep max may differ from your tested 1 rep max.

In example – your 1 rep max squat is 150kg. On a given day, it may be 160kg; on another day, it may be 140kg. If you have a training plan for 80% of your 1 RM, 120kg. Depending on your readiness, that weight could actually be 75% or 85% of your daily max.

So what?

You don’t get stronger just by measuring your training. You get stronger by providing feedback and by taking smart training decisions. Velocity tracking and velocity based training can help you put the right weight on the bar, perform the right number of sets, and the right number of reps. It’s also an excellent proxy for how your strength is developing over time.

To get started with velocity based training you simply need to:

1. Get a velocity tracking device
2. Familiarize yourself with the numbers
3. Determine your velocity & %/exertion curve.
4. Start planning your training based on velocity.