Inside BladeBoost's Performance Testing: What We Measure and Why

BladeBoost's performance testing protocol is built around five tests: a standing broad jump, a vertical jump, a 0-10m acceleration sprint, a pro-agility shuttle, and a bodyweight pull-up test. None of them require a lab. All five can be run in a rink lobby or a gym in under 40 minutes for a full team.

Here's what each one measures, and why it made the list.

Standing Broad Jump: horizontal power

A standing broad jump measures how much horizontal force a player can generate in a single explosive movement, the same quality that drives a skating stride push. It needs nothing more than a tape measure and a flat surface, and because it's a single clean movement, it's easy to judge consistently across an entire roster.

Vertical Jump: measured by video, not a wall

A vertical jump measures explosive leg power in the vertical plane. The catch: measuring it accurately across a full team is harder than it looks. A wall-touch test or a visual estimate introduces enough error that results aren't reliably comparable between players, let alone between testing sessions months apart.

BladeBoost's protocol measures vertical jump using slow-motion video and a flight-time calculation: the time a player spends in the air, converted into jump height by an app built for exactly this. It's the same underlying method sports scientists use, made accessible with a smartphone instead of a force plate.

0-10m Acceleration Sprint: the first steps

Top-end speed gets more attention, but most hockey plays are decided in the first few steps, not a long straight-line sprint. A short 0-10m acceleration test isolates exactly that quality: how fast a player gets moving from a standing start.

Pro-Agility Shuttle (5-10-5): speed under direction change

Hockey rarely rewards straight-line speed on its own. The pro-agility shuttle adds two direction changes to the sprint, testing deceleration and redirection alongside raw speed, closer to how speed actually shows up in a game.

Pull-Up: upper-body strength, no equipment needed

A bodyweight max-rep pull-up test measures relative upper-body strength and muscular endurance. It needs nothing but a bar, which makes it one of the easiest tests to standardize across different training locations.

What's deliberately not on the list

A few tests that show up in professional combines were left out on purpose. Weighted squats measure lower-body strength well, but the injury risk from a loaded squat under imperfect technique, especially across a large group tested by different supervisors, outweighs what the number adds. Grip strength and cycling-based conditioning tests (like a Wingate test) require equipment most teams don't have and measure qualities that matter less for hockey-specific output than the five tests above.

The goal isn't to copy a professional combine test-for-test. It's to keep the list short enough that a team will actually run it every month, and specific enough that every test on it says something real about hockey performance.

Curious how testing fits alongside on-ice and off-ice training? See BladeBoost's development programs.