Next Generation Performance

🚩 REGISTRATION FOR NGPC 2027 IS NOW OPEN.

30–31 January 2027 | Kraków, Poland 🇵🇱
CKF 13 Centrum Konferencyjne Fabryczna

The 3rd edition of the Next Generation Performance International Conference by Hawkin Dynamics & ALTIS is officially open for registration.

NGPC 2027 will bring together an international community across Sports Science, Sports Medicine and Strength & Conditioning for the largest sports performance event in Central and Eastern Europe.

Early Bird rates are now available.
Pre- and post-conference workshops are already close to selling out.

🔗 Discover the full programme and secure your place at www.ngpconference.com.

Join hundreds of practitioners committed to developing their expertise and raising the standard of practice. Combine two days of professional development with a visit to Kraków - one of Europe’s most visited destinations.

🇬🇧 Public ticket sales for the Next Generation Performance International Conference 2027 open on 1 September.

At 19:00 Polish time (CEST), we will update the event website and open public registration for the largest sport performance & medicine event in Central and Eastern Europe.

NGPC 2027 will take place in Kraków on 30-31 January 2027, bringing together an international group of speakers and professionals across Sports Science, Sports Medicine, and Strength & Conditioning.

01 SEP | 19:00 CEST
www.ngpconference.com
Powered by ALTIS & Hawkin Dynamics

🇵🇱 1 września rozpoczynamy otwartą sprzedaż biletów na Next Generation Performance International Conference 2027.

O 19:00 czasu polskiego (CEST) zaktualizujemy stronę wydarzenia i uruchomimy publiczną rejestrację na największy event sport performance & medicine w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej.

NGPC 2027 odbędzie się 30-31 stycznia 2027 w Krakowie, gromadząc międzynarodowych prelegentów i specjalistów z obszarów Sports Science, Sports Medicine oraz Strength & Conditioning.

01.09 | 19:00 CEST
www.ngpconference.com
Sponsorzy tytularni: ALTIS & Hawkin Dynamics

🚩 Pre-launch list access also applies to both of our full-day practical workshops. Members of the list will receive a private three-day booking window before public sale, giving them the first opportunity to secure a place in the limited-capacity groups:

→ Stuart McMillan | 29 January 2027 (Friday | pre-conference)
Preparing for Speed: Warm-Up Strategies and Acceleration Development

→ Mladen Jovanović | 1 February 2027 (Monday | post-conference)
Agile Periodisation

During the private-access window, workshop places will be available at the early bird price. As a thank you for joining the pre-launch list, members will also receive an additional 5% discount code by email.

This is the lowest price that will ever be available for either workshop.

Private access opens on 29 August.
Public ticket and workshop sales open on 1 September.
Join the pre-launch list before private access begins.

🔗 www.ngpconference.com by ALTIS & Hawkin Dynamics
📍 29/01-01/02/2027 | Kraków, Poland

🇬🇧 The response to our pre-launch list has been incredible - thank you to everyone who has already joined us. Registration for NGPC 2027 opens on 1 September.

There are only a few days left to join the pre-launch list and secure the best possible conditions for booking your place at the 3rd edition of the Next Generation Performance International Conference:

→ private ticket access 3 days before public sale
→ an additional 5% off the early bird price

That means pre-launch list members will have access to the lowest ticket price available for NGPC 2027. If you are planning to join us in Kraków, this is the moment to get on the list.

NGPC 2027 | Kraków | 30–31 January
Public registration opens 01.09.2026.
🔗 www.ngpconference.com

🇵🇱 Ogromnie cieszy nas zainteresowanie naszą listą przedpremierową - dziękujemy wszystkim, którzy już zdecydowali się do niej dołączyć. 1 września ruszają zapisy na NGPC 2027.

Zostało już tylko kilka dni, aby dołączyć do listy przedpremierowej i zagwarantować sobie najkorzystniejsze warunki zakupu biletu na III edycję Next Generation Performance International Conference:

→ dostęp do sprzedaży biletów 3 dni przed jej publicznym startem
→ dodatkowe 5% rabatu od ceny early bird

Oznacza to, że osoby znajdujące się na liście przedpremierowej otrzymają dostęp do najniższej ceny biletów dostępnej w całym cyklu sprzedaży NGPC 2027. Jeżeli planujesz być z nami w Krakowie, to najlepszy moment, aby dołączyć do listy.

NGPC 2027 | Kraków | 30–31 stycznia
Publiczna sprzedaż biletów rusza 01.09.2026.
🔗 www.ngpconference.com

👉🏻 Can we really analyse peak braking/negative/eccentric velocity without considering how much space an athlete has to generate it?

Our new paper highlights an important gap in vertical jump assessment: raw PBV values are strongly influenced by countermovement depth, making fixed benchmarks potentially misleading. To address this, we propose free-fall normalised peak braking velocity (PBVFF) - a simple index that expresses observed PBV relative to the displacement-specific theoretical velocity limit.

The result is an additional layer of mechanical context that can support more meaningful profiling, monitoring and benchmarking. Importantly, the index demonstrated acceptable reliability and meaningfully reclassified athletes compared with raw PBV-based scoreboards.

If you use force plates and interpret negative-phase CMJ velocity, I strongly encourage you to read the full open-access paper.

Free-fall normalised peak braking velocity for countermovement jump monitoring
BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation
🔗 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13102-026-01920-5

PhD André Rebelo; PhD Jason Lake; PhD Michał Jakub Nowak

⚠️ I am very pleased to share the publication of our latest paper:
“Free-fall normalised peak braking velocity for countermovement jump monitoring” published in BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation (IF 3.4 | Q1).

🔗 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13102-026-01920-5

🚩 DO YOU USE PEAK BRAKING / NEGATIVE / ECCENTRIC VELOCITY TO EXAMINE THE CMJ? Raw values do not tell the whole story. Normalisation provides the mechanical context required for more meaningful interpretation and comparison.

This is my fifth and final scientific paper forming part of my PhD project, and it is particularly important to me because I believe it represents the most innovative contribution within this series, because we introduce a new dimensionless index: Free-Fall Normalised Peak Braking Velocity (PBVFF) — designed to improve how we interpret one of the most commonly used profiling and monitoring tests in sport: the countermovement jump (CMJ).

The fundamental problem is relatively simple.
Peak Braking Velocity (PBV) does not exist independently of countermovement depth. Two athletes can demonstrate exactly the same absolute PBV while using substantially different countermovement depths — and therefore expressing very different relative descent strategies. Anthropometry, available range of motion and self-selected movement strategy further complicate direct between-athlete comparisons. This means that interpreting PBV in m/s alone — or applying the same absolute threshold to every athlete — carries a meaningful risk of misclassification.

In simple terms, PBVFF asks a different question.
👉🏻 PBV asks:
“How fast was the athlete moving downwards?”
👉🏻 PBVFF asks:
“What fraction of the displacement-specific theoretical free-fall velocity limit did the athlete actually express?” This allows PBV to be expressed on an intuitive 0–1 scale — or 0–100% scale — while accounting for the displacement available to generate that velocity.

From an applied perspective, PBVFF may help us:
- compare athletes with different anthropometric profiles and countermovement strategies more fairly,
- develop scoreboards, normative datasets and population-specific benchmarks,
- track changes in descent strategy longitudinally,
- improve quality control of force-plate data,
- simplify coach–athlete communication. Provide immediate feedback on what percentage of the available displacement-specific velocity potential was actually expressed.

If you currently use Peak Braking / Negative / Eccentric Velocity in CMJ profiling, monitoring or return-to-sport assessment, I strongly encourage you to read the paper. I believe this is one of those situations where normalisation may fundamentally change a perspective on this mechanistic problem.

A huge thank you to André Rebelo, Jason Lake and Michał Nowak for helping develop this concept from an applied observation into a published scientific framework.

We’d like to invite you to revisit “The Readiness–Preparedness Bias: Recalibrating Monitoring Logic” — the first paper published under the NGP Sports Science Department banner and, to date, the most-read publication in our portfolio.

👉🏻 Co-authors: Tim Gabbett, André Rebelo, Michał Nowak
🔗 https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2026.1855985/full

The paper addresses one of the most common mistakes we see in applied monitoring: allowing day-to-day readiness data to dictate training decisions without first asking whether the athlete is actually prepared for the demands of their sport.

A drop in a daily metric does not automatically mean that the training stimulus should be reduced.

In our proposed framework, normative and sport-specific reference data provide a critical layer of context. The athlete’s position relative to relevant preparedness benchmarks should help determine how much decision-weight we assign to acute readiness variables.

The further an athlete remains from the physical demands of competition, the more monitoring should help us calibrate progressive exposure — not repeatedly protect them from it. As preparedness increases, readiness data can become progressively more decision-relevant.

Monitoring matters. But context determines how much it should matter.
If you work with daily athlete monitoring, we strongly encourage you to read the full paper.

⚠️NEW ARTICLE ⚠️
Do you monitor your athletes or patients using the CMJ? Do you use popular protocols consisting of 3–5 consecutive repetitions? There is probably a more effective way to do it.

Another project developed under the Next Generation Performance Sports Science Department has now seen the light of day — this time in the Journal of Sports Sciences (Dr Tim Gabbett, Dr Jason Lake, Szymon Karpęcki, Dr Michał Nowak)

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02640414.2026.2712762

For this study, we extracted 35451 CMJ repetitions from 998 athletes from our force-plate database and applied a detailed, multi-stage filtering process to identify standardised 3 + 3 testing sessions.

We then mapped where the best repetition occurred across six clustered CMJs for seven key performance and force–time metrics, examining the pattern both on athletes’ personal-best days and during their typical performance state.

And the message for practitioners is quite simple:
If your goal is to capture an athlete’s highest CMJ performance, three repetitions may simply not be enough.

In our dataset, the first three repetitions captured only approximately:
▪️ 54% of peak jumpheight values
▪️ 48% of peak mRSI values
▪️ 39% of peak average relative braking force values
▪️ 33% of peak average relative braking power values

🔎 The braking phase was particularly interesting.
Both average relative braking force and average relative braking power progressively shifted towards later attempts, with the sixth repetition being the most common location of the session-best value.
For several other variables, including mRSI and average relative propulsive power, the peak most frequently occurred on repetition 4 — the first jump after the 60–90 s cluster break.

This suggests that the process of calibrating, tuning and organising movement may take longer than we sometimes assume.
Even experienced and high-level athletes may need several maximal attempts before they express something close to their best available solution — not only in terms of the final performance output, but also in the kinetic strategy used to produce it.

For some time, we have seen a methodological gap in CMJ monitoring: testing protocols themselves are rarely validated.
Three or five jumps.
These approaches have often become routine simply because they are practical — or because they are embedded within research traditions, software workflows and manufacturers recommendations.

🚩 Based on our findings, a 6-repetition clustered protocol organised as 3 + 3, with a short recovery period between clusters, appears to be a reasonable candidate when the objective is to maximise the probability of capturing high CMJ performance values that are closer to an athlete’s current neuromuscular ceiling.

Nowy sezon, nowe wyzwania ⚽️

Nasza trenerka Karolina Gec, oprócz świetnego otwarcia sezonu w najwyższej klasie rozgrywkowej kobiecej piłki nożnej w Polsce, rozpoczęła równolegle pracę w strukturach akademii swojego klubu jako trenerka przygotowania motorycznego.

Zgodnie z naszą filozofią i etyką pracy, Karolina — przy wsparciu naszego koordynatora Michała oraz fizjoterapeuty Sebastiana — wdraża powtarzalną baterię testów motorycznych. Jej celem jest jeszcze lepsze zrozumienie procesu treningowego, monitorowanie rozwoju oraz poznanie indywidualnych profili atletycznych młodych piłkarek.

Życzymy powodzenia w całym sezonie! Trzymamy kciuki zarówno za jak najlepszy wynik sportowy, jak i za możliwie najwyższą dostępność wszystkich zawodniczek do treningu i rywalizacji.

fot. Marianna Gurba