It’s a common sight in high schools across the country: an athlete posting huge squat and deadlift numbers yet pulling a muscle or blowing an ACL on a routine field cut. How does that happen? The answer usually comes down to positional weakness: being powerful in some positions but alarmingly unstable in others. The worst part is, good athletes are great at masking these weaknesses on the field…right up until they get hurt. That makes it hard to assess their overall stability on the field. Coaches and parents often praise a “big, strong kid,” but that label can mask poor movement quality. Athletes who rely on brute force without control develop blind spots at specific joint angles or planes of motion. Those blind spots are where most noncontact injuries occur. Consider an athlete who excels at the “big basics.” I very often see a kid with monster bilateral lifts who