Angela Coon gave a talk at the World Speed Summit on the subject of why athletes don’t perform as well as they should based on her life as an athlete and coach. She did poorly because she ate poorly, didn’t get enough recovery, trained poorly and didn’t get enough sleep until she met Charlie Francis.

One of the big problems she discussed was not getting enough recovery. This can be because you do things that sabotage yourself or because you are not getting enough of it.

• Sleep is a big deal. Some people have trouble sleeping; you need to realize that this is a skill which must be developed. You can start teaching it to young children. Even if you sleep well you must get enough of it.

• Nutrition is another thing which is very big. Angela felt that most people have too much sugar and processed foods and not enough protein. Ben Johnson was born in Jamaica and had a good diet with organ meats, fats, skin, bone broth, rice and beans, coconut oil and vegetables.

• Training needs to be split into high and low intensity. You can’t be in the middle all of the time. This will burn you out. Working harder is not necessarily better because it is easy to overtrain. The nervous system takes nine times longer to recover than the musculoskeletal system.

• More recovery/regeneration work is better. It doesn’t need to be expensive. There are many things you can do: self massage (thumper mini pro), epsom salt bath, regular bath, contrast showers, elevate legs, hang upside down, wear comfortable clothes, get in the pool, etc.

She made a big deal out of blood sugar. Many people have blood sugar which is too high and need to get it lower.

She recommended two addition sources on nutrition. Dr. Natasha Turner on how foods effect hormones and Dr. Trudy Scott (the mood gal).

Joel Smith talked at the World Speed Summit 3 about plyometrics for speed.  Jumping can be used to both increase speed and judge someone’s skill levels.

• A standing jump for height is an indicator of fast twitch muscles.  It correlates well for acceleration to 30-40 yards.  You can do varying amounts of squatting before the jump.  The deeper you squat the higher you go, but a shallow dip correlates better with running (deeper dip correlates well with sports where crouched such as football/basketball).  The shin angle should match the torso angle, if it doesn’t don’t do the drill.
• Repeated jumping (4-5 times for height as fast as possible) is an indicator of top speed.  It shows an athletes reactive ability.  It correlates well with upright running speed and sprinting ability in the 60 m and greater distances.

Some people are “built to jump” and those people need plyometrics less than other people.

Plyometrics are important for both injury prevention and explosiveness development.  They teach you how to land safely and help with starting and stopping which is required in team sports.  They compensate for a lack of all around athletic ability.

Contact time is very important.  High jumpers often don’t have great speed, but they have very short contact time when jumping.  Often jumping high is not as important as being able to jump quickly when needed.

Laterally jumping over a bench is a great drill.  Do it for a set time 5 – 10 – 15 – 20 seconds. Try to get the max number of jumps possible in that time.  You want to have your body stay relatively motionless while your feet flick back and forth over the bench with relatively little knee bend on landing.

Derek Hansen is a specialist in speed training for football. He spoke at the Third World Speed Summit about speed training and football.

A key mental framework Derek has is dividing speed training into three intensity/energy levels:

1. Alactic: high speed and short duration with long recovery, 95% or more of max speed

2. Lactic-anaerobic: medium speed and short recovery

3. Aerobic: low speed and continuous, 75% or less of max speed

Derek sees the key as to hit the upper and lower stages but the middle stage is not as important. However, most coaches love the middle speed because that is where you hurt the most. Coaches also don’t like to have people standing around and waiting between runs which is what is necessary for alactic training. If you ramp up the volume or cut rest you automatically move from alactic to lactic-anaerobic.

Charlie Francis recommended 35% of training be high intensity and 65% be of low intensity. For other athletes the ratio will be different.

Studies have shown that athletes spend only 2% of a game at high speed and that high speed is actually fairly slow. The fastest people run is often when they’re coming into a game from the sideline. However, race cars and sports cars rarely hit their top speed, but their top speed does help them at lower speeds. Part of it is their cutting and part is that they don’t have enough distance to get their speed up.