New Perch Product Launch: Perch EVALUATE

Perch EVALUATE is here. Assess readiness and fatigue at the weight rack. No additional equipment. No change to workflow.

With Perch EVALUATE, use Perch to assess jump performance to understand athlete readiness and performance at the weight rack. Enhance efficiency by seamlessly integrating jump testing into the normal weight room workflows right at the weight rack.

Track and report progress using intuitive reporting tools with Perch Evaluate.

What Are Assessments?

Perch EVALUATE enables jump testing and assessments. Assessments are a way to get feedback on the state of the athlete. Generally, how the athlete’s nervous system is responding to training. Assessing athletes prior to the training session for the day is critical in understanding if a session needs to be adjusted to optimize training for the individual on a daily basis. Assessment of athlete’s readiness over time will allow you to:

• Track training impact
• Track injury progression / return to play
• Prevent injury / overtraining
• Demonstrate proof of training impact i.e. if a program is having the intended outcomes and adaptations (is my athlete getting faster, more explosive, jumping higher etc).

What type of Evaluations can I track?

Currently we offer three jump assessments:

• Countermovement Jump (Arms Fixed)
• Countermovement Jump (Arms Swing)
• Continuous Jumps

For all three of these assessments, you may have access to five metrics, depending on your software tier:

• Jump height
• RSI Mod
• Time to Takeoff
• Takeoff Velocity
• Rep Count

How Do I Access EVALUATE?

To access EVALUATE, open your Perch app and go into the Exercise Select menu and select the tab in the top right labeled EVALUATE. Once selected, you should see the exercise selection menu change from your normal exercises to the jumps listed above.

We would recommend testing the camera's presets before jumping. Keep in mind, the further back you get from the camera, the more of the cone that represents the field of view you'll have to work with. We recommend that you have your athletes stand roughly 8 to 12 feet away from the camera to ensure Perch captures the full ROM.

To record a set, simply press the RECORD button at the bottom of the page. The rep recording will look slightly different than it does normally - instead of a bar for each rep, it will display a circle that shows the value of each recorded rep. As you jump, you will see the Rep Count increase in the top left hand corner of the screen to reflect the number of jumps performed. To save a set, hit the Stop button at the bottom of the page.

What Data Insights Do You Offer for EVALUATE?

Perch EVALUATE comes with built in insights on both the tablet and web application. You can see:

Overview stats: Quickly compare results from today’s set to recent sets and the athlete’s 30-day average, and compared to your all time best for the selected assessment.

Stop-light feature: Perch will highlight when an athlete is performing outside of their normal range.

• Green = Above 1 standard deviation
• Yellow = -1 to -2 standard deviations
• Red = Below -2 standard deviations

Chart

• The “blue zone” charting function allows you to quickly assess whether evaluated sets are within 1 standard deviation from the mean over a selected window of time.
• A dotted line shows the set average for the time period selected.

Stat comparison table:

• Stoplight feature based on standard deviation

These stats will all also be visible in the Perch Web App under the individual athlete "EVALUATE" tab so coaches can understand readiness, performance, and progress over time.

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Perch EVALUATE User Stories

Coach Mike Nagler at UC Irvine has been using Perch for jump testing for a long time, he had this to say about using Perch EVALUATE:

"We've been jumping athletes on Perch since before you could do bodyweight, so with dowels or barbells we would have athletes do 3 jumps and see what velocities were output. Now that it is bodyweight and the metrics are more relevant, it's been great. We jump test them twice a week if we can, depending on the season.

"We have them come in, we preset the evaluation using Perch PLAN. They do their 3 jumps, the score is up there. The other thing I do with it as well, I use the Leaderboard, so not only are they going against themselves, they see where they stack amongst the team. And it's just instant data collection which is great. We are looking at them staying around that same jump on Mondays and Fridays. If it goes up then great, they're getting more explosive, more powerful. But we're also trying to take note of when it's dropping and going below. So if we're not hitting numbers that's okay, we know based on the evaluation what to expect. And we keep track of both so we can talk with coaches with where athletes are at practice. Travel can affect it, and we're just trying to track all that data and have more information to our coaches."

Coach Jeremy Fradin at UCF Baseball told us this about jump testing and the impact of Perch EVALUATE:

"We use the vertical jump to develop quick movement and countermovement how to produce force in a short amount of time. We don't just use it as an assessment. In season we give them three opportunities to jump, and we use it to understand how their central nervous system is firing. And if they're outside of 92 - 90% of their average, we'll make adjustments to their training that day. And with Perch being able to assess this and see athletes easily it'll make a big difference. I have one jump mat, and there's always a line in session. Guys will do their warm up stuff and then we'll have a line of like 14 guys waiting to jump even through the warmup. So we talk about efficiency and how to make things smoother, Perch adding evaluations is going to be one of the best things for us. Especially in season when athletes don't have a ton of time to lift. If guys are at the rack and they can start hitting their jumps at the rack and all the guys are getting done much quicker that's going to make a huge difference. So between the accuracy of Perch, the efficiency of Perch, and being able to save the data automatically instead of writing it on sheets is huge. And on Perch's back end being able to flag stuff and understand issues and give us data and insights outside of just getting a vertical jump number is great."

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Curious about any of our Products from Perch PLAN, Perch EVALUATE, and Perch TRAIN? Let us know and reach out to us at https://www.perch.fit/contact