> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.uplift.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Normative Ranges

> How to Interpret Uplift Normative Data

Uplift Normative Ranges allow for comparison of an athlete's performance data against a peer population.
All results were manually-reviewed and filtered to remove outliers and poor-quality sessions before computing percentiles.
Use these tables to understand what a good value looks like for a given population, and to give context to the exact percentile shown in a report.

## Published Normative Ranges

### Sport-Specific

The current documented ranges for each sport and group size per level.

| Movement                                                                                 | Youth | High School | College | Professional | Broad (All Levels) |
| ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | :---: | :---------: | :-----: | :----------: | :----------------: |
| [Baseball: Hitting](/biomechanics/activities/baseball/hitting/baseball-hitting-norms)    |  239  |     202     |   156   |      293     |         890        |
| [Baseball: Pitching](/biomechanics/activities/baseball/pitching/baseball-pitching-norms) |  206  |     226     |   167   |      155     |         754        |
| [Softball: Hitting](/biomechanics/activities/softball/hitting/softball-hitting-norms)    |  104  |     104     |   112   |      112     |         216        |
| [Tennis: Overhand Serve](/biomechanics/activities/tennis/tennis-overhand-serve-norms)    |  227  |      —      |    —    |      300     |         527        |

Softball Hitting session counts are pooled across Youth/High School and College/Professional.
Tennis Overhand Serve does not yet have High School or College samples.

## Competition Levels

Metric pages show a summary table with five percentile cuts (10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 90th) and up to five competition levels.

| Population             | Description                                   |
| ---------------------- | --------------------------------------------- |
| **Youth**              | Middle school or younger (typically under 14) |
| **High School**        | Ages 14–18                                    |
| **College**            | Collegiate athletes                           |
| **Professional**       | Professional or elite athletes                |
| **Broad (All Levels)** | All athletes combined for a general reference |

## How competition levels were determined:

3 different methods:

* **User-specified**: account owner or user actively labelled the athlete's level.
* **Organizational association**: Collected by a collegiate or professional team. Even if that athlete does not officially play for that team, we assume that they have the capacity to compete on the organization's level.
* **Manually-Labelled**: determined via Uplift Biomechanist video review, subjectively gauging athlete age/size and coordination.

For each sport-specific movement:

* **Baseball Hitting**: user-specified and organizational association
* **Baseball Pitching**: user-specified and organizational association
* **Softball Hitting**: organizational association and manually-labelled
* **Tennis Overhand Serve**: user-specified

## Interpreting Percentiles

Uplift reports may show an exact percentile (e.g. 77th, 33rd) for each continuous metric, telling you where the athlete ranks within their population group.

* **77th percentile** → the athlete's value is higher than 77% of similar athletes.
* **33rd percentile** → the athlete's value is higher than only 33% — roughly the lower third.

Use these bands as a quick guide for *Higher is better* metrics:

| Percentile     | What it means                    |
| -------------- | -------------------------------- |
| 90th +         | Elite — top 10%                  |
| 75th – 89th    | Above average                    |
| 25th – 74th    | Average                          |
| 11th – 24th    | Below average                    |
| 10th and below | Low — likely a training priority |

However, direction matters. A high percentile isn't always the target.
The **Optimal Range** column highlights the target window based on the metric's direction:

* **Higher is better** (>75th): The higher the better. This generally includes rotational or linear velocities, and sometimes range of motion.
* **Middle is optimal** (25th-75th): Extremes in either direction are suboptimal. Typical for positional metrics, like joint angles during a motion.
* **Lower is better** (\<25th): Where a lower percentile is desired. These are not as common, but do occur, such as lead knee angle at ball contact during hitting.

Percentiles are most useful when tracked over time. A shift from the 40th to the 60th percentile across a training block signals real progress, even if both sit in the "average" band.