Emporia State Football Maximizes Performance with SPT
In 2022, Emporia State Football further invested in the performance and health of their players by adding SPT to their Football Sports Performance program. The Hornets have since had back-to-back 9 win campaigns, including Bowl wins in December to cap off both seasons. Coaching and Talent certainly have a lot to do with that, but physically preparing your players and putting them in a position to succeed is often understated.
SPT was able to talk with Head Strength and Conditioning coach, Tyler Kitzman, about the ways he’s implemented and grown Emporia State’s use of SPT to help solidify the Hornets as a national contender.
1. Precision Tracking for Optimal Training
"We use SPT to track key performance metrics, like our Top Speeds, 3D Loads, our overall Hard Running and Sprint Distances. We use it all throughout the year from our Winter program to Spring Ball, our Summer training and then in-season. We don’t want to just guess our yardages or work loads during certain periods, but try to get them as exact as possible in order to maximize our training and practices."
2. Tailored Training for Every Position
"We look at certain positional data as well to give us an accurate look at the work we need in order to best prepare our guys for the demands they will see throughout the year. For example, our lineman have different demands than our skill players, so we can look at 3D Load and Heart Rate to design our Summer conditioning to better reflect the stresses put on their body during camp and in-season. Our defensive skill players might not have the same amount of high-speed running as our offensive skill players due to backpedaling or shuffling, but their workloads are just as high and our training has to reflect that. If we used the same approach for everybody to speed work and conditioning, we would be average at best and miss the mark in our development."
3. Peak Performance on Game Day
"in-season we track our workloads week to week to best prepare ourselves for game day. Every game will be stressful, but how much so compared to other weeks? Are our game weeks similar in that we have high days, low days, and so on. Similar to lifting, we shouldn’t be seeing a linear type workload every day. We have high demand days and low demand days, and use our GPS data to help peak our guys for game day every week."
GPS is proven to be an invaluable asset to the development and safety of players at every level across the country, but we asked Coach Kitzman “Why is SPT specifically a good fit for Emporia State?”
"SPT allows us here at Emporia State and other schools like us to have our foot in the game with GPS data. The units and software are straightforward, and allow us to get the data we need in order to benefit. With limited resources, we don’t have a person on staff dedicated just to data analysis, and with SPT it’s easy to use and collect data along with filtering what we find useful for our program."
Finally, we discussed the intangible impact that SPT has on his program. Having the data is obviously important, but how does your program use this as a tool to align program philosophy and culture?
"Our players become more aware of how their habits affect their daily training and the data we collect from SPT helps us validate that. When our players see the improvement in their performance data that coincides with their improved habits, that’s when we see individual ownership that then goes throughout the position group, their side of the ball, and the whole team."
SPT is proud to partner with their program and excited to see the success this season has in store!
Interested to learn what SPT could do for your program? Get in touch! Email our USA Head of Sales, Michael, or click here for a Team Quote.