Today on The Ascent, we’re asking a question every athlete, parent, and coach should understand: Which test tells us more, the 40-Yard Dash or the 5-10-5 Pro Agility? We’ll break down what each test actually measures, why both can be valuable depending on the athlete’s sport and position, and how sprint times, directional differences, movement mechanics, and slow-motion video can reveal much more than simply whether an athlete is “fast.”

We’re also spotlighting our newest APEX Performance Partner, Win The Day Baseball. Their athletes have been putting in the work at APEX each week, combining baseball development with dedicated performance training. We’ll introduce their program, their commitment to developing complete ballplayers and high-character young men, and why their philosophy makes them such a natural partner for APEX.

In Coach’s Corner, we’re talking about why practice should be one of the safest places for athletes to fail. Mistakes aren’t something coaches should always try to eliminate. When athletes are appropriately challenged, failure gives them an opportunity to experiment, adjust, solve problems, and develop the confidence to respond when things don’t go perfectly in competition.

Finally, in The Daily Edge, we’re giving athletes something they can immediately add to their training: five minutes of dedicated deceleration work. Everyone wants to become faster, but learning to absorb force, stop under control, and efficiently redirect that force can be just as important. Sometimes gaining an edge means spending a little less time training the gas pedal and a little more time building better brakes.

It’s Target Tuesday, so today’s message is simple: don’t just put in more work. Know what you’re working toward.

This week, we’re proud to welcome Win The Day Baseball as one of APEX’s newest Performance Partners.

Win The Day has quickly become a familiar sight at APEX, with their athletes training in our facility each week and dedicating an additional hour to performance development with Coach Ryan. But what makes this partnership such a natural fit goes well beyond baseball.

Win The Day believes that developing great players starts with developing great young men. Their program emphasizes fundamentals, discipline, mental toughness, accountability and a family-first culture, with success measured not simply by trophies, but by the athletes their players become on and off the field.

That philosophy aligns closely with what we’re building at APEX. Development takes time. It takes great coaching, consistent work, accountability and a willingness to pursue improvement every day.

As Win The Day puts it:

“We’re not in the business of collecting trophies. We’re in the business of developing confident athletes, strong teammates, and high-character young men.”

We’re excited to have Win The Day Baseball training with us and even more excited to support their players, coaches and families as an APEX Performance Partner.

Built on Purpose. Driven Every Day. Earn the W.

Welcome to the APEX family, Win The Day Baseball. 

Which test tells us more about an athlete: the 40-yard dash or the 5-10-5 Pro Agility? The answer is both, depending on the athlete and their sport. They measure different qualities, and looking at them together can tell us much more than either number alone.

The 40-yard dash measures linear sprint performance, but at TitanForge we care about more than the final time. The early splits help us evaluate acceleration, while later portions tell us about the athlete’s ability to continue building speed. Sprint testing over distances from 5–40 meters is widely used and has demonstrated good reliability in youth athletes.

The 5-10-5 Pro Agility is much more than a change-of-direction time. It challenges an athlete to accelerate, rapidly decelerate, plant, reverse direction and reaccelerate. Those abilities matter in nearly every field and court sport, where athletes constantly have to create force, absorb it and redirect it.

At TitanForge, we also want to know how the athlete performs going in each direction. Comparing right- and left-side performance can expose directional asymmetries that aren’t obvious when we look only at the athlete’s total time. Research supports this approach: studies using change-of-direction testing have found measurable differences between athletes’ dominant and non-dominant directions, and researchers recommend assessing both directions rather than treating change-of-direction ability as a single number.  

Then we add slow-motion video, because two athletes can run similar times while moving very differently. We can examine how effectively the athlete lowers their center of mass, controls the final steps into the cut, positions the foot and knee, controls the trunk and pelvis, absorbs braking forces and pushes out of the change of direction. That helps us identify movement strategies that may be inefficient or warrant further assessment, rather than pretending a stopwatch can diagnose an injury.

That last distinction is important. An asymmetry or poor cutting position doesn’t mean an athlete is going to get injured. Injury risk is multifactorial. But identifying significant side-to-side differences or poor movement strategies can give coaches information worth investigating and training. Even more interesting, research has shown that looking only at total change-of-direction time can actually hide asymmetries, which is why combining sprint data, directional performance and movement analysis gives us a much better picture.  

So which number should your athlete care about? It depends on their sport and position. A receiver needs acceleration and linear speed but also has to brake and redirect through routes. A baseball or softball player needs explosive acceleration out of the box and on the bases. A soccer or basketball player may place even greater demands on repeated acceleration, deceleration and changes of direction. And technically, the 5-10-5 measures pre-planned change of direction, not reactive agility, an important distinction supported by sports-science research.

This is where those internet charts can become misleading. Age, sex, biological maturation, sport, position and even how the test is timed can affect performance. Research shows sprint and Pro Agility performance generally improves as young athletes develop, which is why comparing an 11-year-old, a 15-year-old and a college athlete against the same standard makes little sense.

That’s also why one of the most important comparisons is the athlete against their own baseline. Test them, identify where they’re deficient, train intentionally and then retest under the same conditions. If their 10-yard acceleration and 5-10-5 improve meaningfully, we have evidence that the training is actually transferring to performance rather than simply accumulating more reps.

That’s exactly what we do during a TitanForge Biomechanics & Performance Screening. Speed and change of direction are pieces of a much larger picture that can include mobility, force production, power, balance, stability, asymmetries and movement mechanics. The goal isn’t to collect impressive-looking numbers. It’s to identify what may be limiting the athlete and what we should train next.

TEST. MEASURE. TRAIN. REPEAT.
Train Smarter. Play Harder.

If your athletes aren’t failing during practice, there’s a good chance practice isn’t challenging them enough.

Practice shouldn’t be about proving what an athlete can already do. It’s where athletes should be encouraged to try something difficult, make mistakes, adjust and try again. A hitter working on a mechanical change might swing and miss. A quarterback changing their footwork might miss a receiver. An athlete learning a new cutting technique might initially be slower. That’s not necessarily bad training. That’s learning.

As coaches, we have to create an environment where athletes understand the difference between careless failure and productive failure. Missing because you weren’t focused isn’t the same as missing because you’re attempting something just outside your current ability. We want athletes operating at that edge, where success isn’t guaranteed but improvement is possible.

This is also why we shouldn’t immediately rescue athletes every time something goes wrong. Sometimes the best coaching question isn’t, “Do you know what you did wrong?” It’s “What did you feel?” or “What would you change on the next rep?” Give athletes an opportunity to solve problems instead of making them dependent on a coach for an answer after every rep.

And coaches need to be careful about praising only successful outcomes. If we celebrate the perfect throw but criticize every miss, athletes quickly learn to choose the safest option. Instead, recognize intent, adjustment and execution of the objective. Sometimes an athlete can perform exactly what we’re teaching and still get a bad result. That rep can still be valuable.

Games are where we want athletes prepared to perform. Practice is where we prepare them by giving them permission to fail, learn, adjust and grow.

So coaches, make practice difficult enough that your athletes occasionally fail. Then teach them what matters even more:

Coach Ryan
APEX Batting Cages & Performance Lab

Every Night | 7 PM - 8 PM | $40 Drop In or Sign Up for Monthly Pass

Athletic performance starts with movement. This session focuses on improving mobility, balance, stability, coordination, and body control. Athletes will learn how to move better, reduce injury risk, and build the foundation needed for speed, strength, and power development.

Find out more here

Every Night | 4 PM - 5PM | $99/month

Our summer flag football development program is designed to help athletes improve their football IQ, route running, quarterback play, defensive skills, speed, agility, and overall athletic development. Whether your athlete is new to the game or preparing for the upcoming season, this program provides a fun, competitive environment focused on long-term growth and confidence.

Find out more here

Everyone wants to get faster. Very few athletes spend time deliberately practicing how to stop.

At the end of your warm-up, spend just 5 minutes practicing controlled deceleration. Sprint 5–10 yards, then work on stopping your momentum quickly and under control. Progress to stopping from different angles and eventually stopping before immediately accelerating in another direction.

Why? The faster you can absorb force and control your body, the better positioned you are to redirect that force and accelerate again. That matters when you’re cutting, changing direction, running routes, fielding a ball, stealing a base or reacting to an opponent.

5 minutes. 2–3 times per week.

Accelerate → Brake → Control → Reaccelerate

Don’t just train the gas pedal.

Build better brakes.