Most athletes do not underperform on test day because they lack capacity. They underperform because they have never rehearsed the movements being measured, arrive with tired legs, and treat the first attempt as the warm-up. Six weeks of structured preparation is usually worth more on the day than six months of unstructured training.
Get AQ Ready is a free six-week block built for exactly that problem. Three sessions a week, thirty to sixty minutes each, doable at a park, a school gym or a driveway. It does not replace your sport — it sits around it.
Why six weeks, and why three sessions
Six weeks is the shortest window in which a junior athlete can make a measurable change to force production and movement quality without needing a training age they do not have. It is also short enough to be finished before a testing window opens in most cities.
- 01Session A — speed and acceleration, earliest in the week, on the freshest legs you have.
- 02Session B — power and change of direction, where most junior time is lost.
- 03Session C — strength and an aerobic finish, the base everything else sits on.
What the six weeks actually do
| Week | Focus | What it is really building |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Baseline and mechanics | Honest starting numbers, plus a clean first three steps |
| 2 | Force into the ground | The strength base every speed and jump number sits on |
| 3 | Elastic qualities | Stiffness and rebound — cheap speed you already own |
| 4 | Change of direction | Deceleration, which is where most of the time is lost |
| 5 | Speed expression | Converting the new force into actual metres per second |
| 6 | Sharpen and rehearse | Test-day rehearsal at low volume, arriving fresh |
The order is not arbitrary. You cannot express force you have not built, you cannot change direction quickly if you cannot decelerate, and you cannot sharpen anything in the last week if you are still accumulating fatigue. Week 6 is deliberately the easiest week in the block.
The vectors it prepares you for
The AQ protocol measures eight vectors. This block touches all of them, but it weights the ones most sensitive to short-term preparation: acceleration, lower body power, change of direction and maximum speed. Anthropometrics and the strength vectors are measured rather than trained in six weeks.
Every week ends with a self-test you record yourself — a 20 m sprint, a countermovement jump, a dead hang. Those numbers are not verified and never contribute to an AQ Score. Their value is the trend line you bring into your first verified test, and the confidence of having done each movement a dozen times before it counts.
The mistakes that cost the most
- Testing tired. A baseline taken after a heavy training day makes every later week look like false progress.
- Treating sprints as conditioning. Sprints done fatigued train a different quality entirely — full recovery between reps is not optional.
- Skipping the self-test because the number is disappointing. The point of writing it down is that it is beatable.
- Adding load in week 6. The final week exists to arrive fresh, not to prove something.
- Running the block on top of a heavy competition week. Slot it around your sport, never over it.
What happens after week 6
You go into a verified test having already rehearsed every movement the protocol measures, with six weeks of your own numbers to compare against. Your first AQ Score becomes a baseline; trend tracking unlocks on your passport once you have a second verified test.
If a single vector comes back well below the rest, that is your limiter, and the twelve-week acceleration block is the natural next step for the most common one.