Measure athlete performance

- [Instructor] If you want to win at the Olympics,…then there are plenty of events…where you need to start quickly and go fast.…But at the 2012 Olympics,…the US Men's Basketball Team won gold…in part because of James Harden's unmatched ability…to stop.…Harden, the five-time NBA All-Star…and Houston Rockets shooting guard,…is able to decelerate faster…than anybody else in the league…which explains in part why he shoots more step-back jumpers…than anyone else in the NBA.…This ability was quantified by the researchers…at the Peak Performance Project.…

They've conducted biometric evaluations…on a host of NBA players and found…that Harden's lateral acceleration was unexceptional,…in the 36th percentile,…as was his vertical acceleration,…which put him in the 54th percentile of NBA players.…But for eccentric force,…or the force generated when stopping downward momentum,…he was in the 98th percentile…and his rate of eccentric force development was even higher…at the 99th percentile.…What this shows us is that you can learn surprising things,…