Training for Speed Drumming?

In the drumming community, there is a lot of talk about speed. Some people love it (like myself) and others semm to bash it because either they are lazy and don’t want to take the time to practice getting faster or they feel it has no place in music. From what I see, the ones complaining about this the most lack speed. It’s like skinny guys hating on guys who train for size.

However, in the past ten plus years, the WFD (world’s fastest drummer competition) has become very popular. Basically drummers play on a device that measures the amount of strokes for 60 seconds.

Now here’s where I need some help, and maybe some of you science guys can help me - guys with the best technique have the greatest success at these events. Here’s a video of TOm Grosset who just broke the record for the most strokes. My question, what sort of weightlifting principles would this fall under? Speed endurance with light weight? Heavy weight? Repetition day i.e. westside?

There was a lot of talk about the best practice methods for this and in some cases guys would play slowly at sub par speeds for 90 minutes straight/minimum in order to program the movement into their brain correctly. I am thinking this would shift the fiber types in the arms and muscles?

I never heard of someone lifting a weight for 90 minutes straight to get faster though.

Any thoughts on this?

Here is the video and just so you know, he is not just “spazzing out” as most people think. He is employing a technique and using breathing methods as well and practiced many hours to prepare for this.
The movement is one Right stroke and then one left stroke played repeatedly.

um… You created a post that completely answers the question in the post while asking for answers?

[quote]Airtruth wrote:
um… You created a post that completely answers the question in the post while asking for answers?[/quote]

I love it when people start with um on the internet… well I wasn’t 100% sure and I was looking for someone to elaborate or maybe give me more specifics.

I think you are looking for someone to rephrase what you said so that you can reinforce what you inherently don’t want to believe.

“guys with the best technique have the greatest success at these events”. Says it all. Has nothing to do with weight lifting, barely anything with muscle fiber types, long as you have the endurance which doesn’t require much. Unless you do it all day long with a heavy stick to the point of cramping you would not shift fiber types. The main thing with programming technique is (possibly)growing more neural pathways, and enhancing the ones you have. Outside of practice the best thing you could probably do is take concentration supplements, and to a much weaker extent certain vitamins if your deficient. Like calcium and such.

People do lift weights for long periods of time to get better at. Some olympic lifters have been known to lift for hours to make sure their technique is perfect, as it’s easy to lose it when the weight gets heavier. Same concept with drumming the important part is you go the max speed you can go with perfect technique, going faster with sloppy technique will just hurt you later.

[quote]Airtruth wrote:
I think you are looking for someone to rephrase what you said so that you can reinforce what you inherently don’t want to believe.

“guys with the best technique have the greatest success at these events”. Says it all. Has nothing to do with weight lifting, barely anything with muscle fiber types, long as you have the endurance which doesn’t require much. Unless you do it all day long with a heavy stick to the point of cramping you would not shift fiber types. The main thing with programming technique is (possibly)growing more neural pathways, and enhancing the ones you have. Outside of practice the best thing you could probably do is take concentration supplements, and to a much weaker extent certain vitamins if your deficient. Like calcium and such.

People do lift weights for long periods of time to get better at. Some olympic lifters have been known to lift for hours to make sure their technique is perfect, as it’s easy to lose it when the weight gets heavier. Same concept with drumming the important part is you go the max speed you can go with perfect technique, going faster with sloppy technique will just hurt you later.[/quote]

Thank you for the thorough response.

I have a lot of experinece in the speed area so it’s not to reinforce what I don’t want to hear. That was an assumption you made. I just wanted to see if there were additional methods to supplement my routine or if there were similar methods in the weight lifting community.

With regards to fiber types, I have read that too much slow training can (sometimes) switch/alter fiber types so that’s what I was thinking about as well.

You are right about the technique aspect although that varies when maxnig out with weights. Some get better maxes when they don’t focus on strict form. I have seen this debated on here a lot i.,e. strict form vs cheating.

Random.

Well, as you get faster you know your feet start to “float” and you switch from using the leg to using the calves and ankles to play. I would say hit the calves with plenty of volume. But…I doubt Derek roddy, Jason bittner, romain goulon, Kevin talley, or Lombardo lift. So, I think it’s best to just practice with the click and get faster. I think you’d be best served to look at increasing your foot/hand speed like training: slowly and surely.

I would start relatively slow for you, and say add a bpm a day and just do say 16ths on the kick under a simple eighth note beat for 10 minutes straight. And for hands do the same, just keep quarters between the feet to promote coordination and timing.

Just add speed till you can’t, and reset to a couple of weeks ago speed wise.