Physical testing day protocol and equipment calibration checklist
Problem
Testing days run to a printed protocol sheet: calibrate the force plates against the reference weight, check GPS units are charged and paired, confirm each athlete has a current consent form on file, run the battery in the prescribed order, record results. In practice the calibration step gets done from memory because the printed guide is buried under a stack of athlete cards, the consent check is a quick glance at a binder nobody has updated since pre-season, and the paper sign-off sheet that says it all happened goes into a drawer. When a selection decision, an insurer or a parent later asks whether a given jump test was run against calibrated equipment on a consenting athlete, the honest answer is a shrug and a search through a binder that may or may not be current.
Product idea
A mobile checklist built around the shape of a testing day rather than a generic form. It opens with a per-device calibration step — the reference weight reading typed in, a photo of the calibration output attached — for each force plate and GPS unit in use that day. Each athlete then gets a short pre-test gate: consent and medical clearance flag pulled from the athlete list, a warm-up-complete tick, before the test order is presented in the sequence the protocol requires. The lead sports scientist signs off the batch at the end. It does not interpret results or flag performance concerns — that stays with the analysis tools already in use — it only proves the process that produced the numbers was followed.
Who it is for
Sports scientists and strength & conditioning coaches running testing days, and the Head of Performance who has to answer for a test's validity when a selection or medical decision is later questioned.
Possible first version
A mobile web app covering a single testing day: calibration checklist templates per device type, athlete roster imported from a CSV, consent and clearance flags carried on that roster, photo capture for calibration readouts, enforced test order, and a lead sign-off producing a PDF export per batch. Out of scope for version one: no direct read from force plate or GPS vendor software, no write-back into the athlete management system, and no automatic scoring or interpretation of results — those stay with the systems the performance team already uses.
- Build classification
- Micro-tool
- Rough effort
- 10 day prototype
- Roles involved
- Sports scientist, Strength & conditioning coach, Head of Performance, Performance analyst
- Relevant to
- Professional club, Collegiate athletics, Academy & youth, Federation / governing body
- Systems in play
- Force plate and testing hardware, GPS and wearable tracking platforms, Athlete management systems, Paper inspection forms
- Product framing
- Verify or inspect
Questions we get asked
What do we need to have ready before day one?
An athlete roster with current consent and medical clearance status, and the testing protocol you already run — device order, reference weights, warm-up requirement. There's no need for it to be digitised beyond a spreadsheet; the app is built to match your existing sheet, not to impose a new protocol. If your consent records are not currently centralised, that gap will surface on day one, which is often the more useful discovery than the checklist itself.
Does this replace the software running on the force plates?
No. The force plate or GPS vendor software still captures and stores the actual test data — that is not something this touches or reads from in version one. What it verifies is the step before that: that the device was calibrated and the athlete was eligible to test. Think of it as the sign-off layer sitting in front of tools you already run, not a replacement for them.
Our sports scientists already fill in a paper sign-off sheet before testing. Why change that?
Paper works until someone needs to find last November's sheet, and testing evidence usually gets asked for months after the fact — during a selection dispute or a medical review, not on the day. The test here is simple: does completing this take less time on the floor than the paper version, and can anyone find a specific day's record in under a minute afterwards. If the paper sheet already gets filed somewhere searchable, this is not worth building.
What happens if the calibration check fails partway through a testing day?
The batch is flagged incomplete rather than silently allowed to continue — a failed calibration step blocks that device's tests from being marked as verified until it is redone or a note is added explaining the deviation. It does not stop staff from testing anyway if they choose to; it only stops the record from claiming a check happened when it did not.
Is this your workflow?
Tell us one sports workflow that still runs on paper, spreadsheets, WhatsApp or an outdated system. We will map it and show you what a simpler product looks like.
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