do endurance runs cripple top speed?

joeysnare

Silver Member
i recently met a drummer and we got to talking over the drums and a few beers. he showed me some of his chops and i did the same, and he asked me about some of my practice routines. now my hands absolutly max out at about 240 bpm doing 16th single strokes, but i have a habit when practicing to set the meternome at about 180 and practice 16ths and 32's without stopping for a half hour or more. he told me that this will "cripple" my ability to go above 240 bpm, is there any truth to this statement?
 
None whatsoever. Technique should be practiced in a controlled manner. Case in point - if I were to practice my piano scales correctly at 90 bpm for a long period, it is far more effective than playing them badly at 140 bpm. You should gradually ramp up the tempo and and also ramp the tempo right down to 30 bpm. Playing slowly with control is very important in establishing solid technique.

Speed is not the important factor. It is consistency of correct practice. When the practice is correct, then ramp it up and not before. Length of practice ensures consistency. Ultimately, you are training for endurance of motion, not outright speed. Being able to play 200 bpm all night is important too.
 
Yeah my experience tells me that endurance runs are very effective for increasing top speed, did he give any reasoning as to how he came to that conclusion?
 
If you never push beyond 240 in your speed runs or beyond 180 in your endurance runs, you probably won't see much progress for quite a while. Endurance runs won't cripple your top speed, but they won't improve it either beyond a point.
 
Yeah my experience tells me that endurance runs are very effective for increasing top speed, did he give any reasoning as to how he came to that conclusion?

no he gave no reason really for his conclusion and he was adamant about it so figured i better get some written proof i could show him from better drummers than i. i mean seriously ive been doing this practicing routine for years now and its taken me from 160 bpm to 240 bpm with my hands so i know theres no problem with it , i think he just was in a disagreeing mood, or perhaps i came across as a prick in our convo and he just wanted to shut me up lol i have no idea.
 
If you never push beyond 240 in your speed runs or beyond 180 in your endurance runs, you probably won't see much progress for quite a while. Endurance runs won't cripple your top speed, but they won't improve it either beyond a point.

Yah very true, you do have to push the limit. I spend a lot of my practice time doing endurance runs in a similar manner, but I also spend a small amount of time pushing my speed boundaries. This method has gotten me the biggest gains speed wise.

no he gave no reason really for his conclusion and he was adamant about it so figured i better get some written proof i could show him from better drummers than i. i mean seriously ive been doing this practicing routine for years now and its taken me from 160 bpm to 240 bpm with my hands so i know theres no problem with it , i think he just was in a disagreeing mood, or perhaps i came across as a prick in our convo and he just wanted to shut me up lol i have no idea.

Haha from the sound of things I'd say it was the former, since he didn't give any detail or reasoning.
 
Yah very true, you do have to push the limit. I spend a lot of my practice time doing endurance runs in a similar manner, but I also spend a small amount of time pushing my speed boundaries. This method has gotten me the biggest gains speed wise.

It's all about balance.

Pushing speed needs to be done in order to get faster (and pushing slower to play slower. Nobody seems to believe me when I say that playing at 30 bpm is really hard) but it's all about making sure you are doing it the right way and with a solid foundation. Pushing quickly on will get you results, but you'll find that your ability to reproduce will be spotty and intermittent. You want to be playing well even on your bad days and that applies to everything.

The best technical musicians in the World might be playing material that you can technically play. The difference is that they can play it well even on their really bad days. You can't. That's what you need to aim for and the best way there is systematic and steady improvement.
 
Well, in order to play patterns for songs by Morbid Angel, Emperor and the like the only way i achieved the endurance, stamina, and proficency was to play those beats slower. and gradually increase. Sure test your limits of how fast you can go. Don't blast with the bass drum only doing quarters on the one. That is cheating.

Take the phrase you want to play, play it half the tempo. Then gradually increase. Playing at high rates of speed without proper stamina or without gettign your muscles prepared is asking for injury.

Death/black drumming or very fast motions in any style, without proper trainging is like running a marathon while smoking a pack of ciggarettes and not stretching.

Speed is very good and well, but execution and clean precise hits, where your comfortable can lead to an enjoyable experience.
 
Playing slower is harder because you have to focus a little bit more, versus possible mistakes flying by.

Just like its hard to play pianissimo and very fast.

Hone your craft. Start with the easiest division of the notes you want to play. Eventually you want to play 64ths, start with eighths at a slower tempo.

Having your quads at a 90 degree angle with the ground , and not sitting to high or too low will maximise movement. Sitting to high can cause cramps in calves.

Now I am rambling.
 
Speed hasn't been something I focus much on in drumming but I do on when it comes to bike racing.

My rule for going fast is basically; "If you want to go fast you gotta ride fast." Pedalling and drumming both require very specific neuromuscular processes to be preformed smoothly and efficiently to achieve smooth speed. (btw, when pedaling, you want you muscles firing all the way around the pedal stroke not just up and down)

Back in the '80's in Montreal, Peter Magadini had me doing Speed Intervals. I can't remember the specifics but it's based on his track days and it's basically this;
1. Warm-up
2. 1 minute at speed (you can fine tune the speed and time but you need to push yourself)
3. 1 minute recovery (bring the speed way down)
4. repeat 2 & 3 (10 sets increase the sets as you see fit)

Use a metronome!

The interval time can vary, longer - short but you need to be consistant. Maybe based on the musical intervals/sections you play.
 
Speed hasn't been something I focus much on in drumming but I do on when it comes to bike racing.

My rule for going fast is basically; "If you want to go fast you gotta ride fast." Pedalling and drumming both require very specific neuromuscular processes to be preformed smoothly and efficiently to achieve smooth speed. (btw, when pedaling, you want you muscles firing all the way around the pedal stroke not just up and down)

Back in the '80's in Montreal, Peter Magadini had me doing Speed Intervals. I can't remember the specifics but it's based on his track days and it's basically this;
1. Warm-up
2. 1 minute at speed (you can fine tune the speed and time but you need to push yourself)
3. 1 minute recovery (bring the speed way down)
4. repeat 2 & 3 (10 sets increase the sets as you see fit)

Use a metronome!

The interval time can vary, longer - short but you need to be consistant. Maybe based on the musical intervals/sections you play.

YES!

This is the missing link between the OP and the other drummer. If your max speed is X, and you NEVER practice going X, but rather ONLY practice going considerably slower, then yes, your top speed will decrease over time. By how much is impossible to tell, but I think the friend is technically correct in his statement. Muscles are strange machines in that they improve the more we work them. If they are challenged in terms of speed, then, for the most part, they will improve in terms speed. Practicing SOLELY at a comfortable rate for long periods does not challenge the muscles' speed, does it? It does, however, do wonders for their endurance at moderate speeds.

If you practice below your top speed (jogging pace), and periodically play short stretches that approach or exceed your top speed (sprint), and then return to your starting speed (jog), then you WILL, over time, increase your top speed. Sprinters have been training this way for decades.

Joeysnare, if you truly want to become a faster drummer, you should definitely work Big Foot's routine into your practice sessions. I would also encourage you to play very short sprints (maybe only a measure long to start), where you attempt to play 16ths past the 240 mark, returning immediately to, say, 8ths or 8th note triplets.
 
YES!

This is the missing link between the OP and the other drummer. If your max speed is X, and you NEVER practice going X, but rather ONLY practice going considerably slower, then yes, your top speed will decrease over time. By how much is impossible to tell, but I think the friend is technically correct in his statement. Muscles are strange machines in that they improve the more we work them. If they are challenged in terms of speed, then, for the most part, they will improve in terms speed. Practicing SOLELY at a comfortable rate for long periods does not challenge the muscles' speed, does it? It does, however, do wonders for their endurance at moderate speeds.

If you practice below your top speed (jogging pace), and periodically play short stretches that approach or exceed your top speed (sprint), and then return to your starting speed (jog), then you WILL, over time, increase your top speed. Sprinters have been training this way for decades.

Joeysnare, if you truly want to become a faster drummer, you should definitely work Big Foot's routine into your practice sessions. I would also encourage you to play very short sprints (maybe only a measure long to start), where you attempt to play 16ths past the 240 mark, returning immediately to, say, 8ths or 8th note triplets.

sorry to stop you there but this isnt about me getting faster, its just the statement of "if you do endurance runs at slow speeds you will never raise your top speed". which as was previously stated because of my particular practice habits it infact has raised my playing speed a full 80 bpm over then past 4 years.

but you definitly do give good advice ive used all the techniqes youve noted over the years and they have all helped in their own ways from raising my max speed, to helping me play with more finess, dynamics, complexity and endurance.
 
i recently met a drummer and we got to talking over the drums and a few beers. he showed me some of his chops and i did the same, and he asked me about some of my practice routines. now my hands absolutly max out at about 240 bpm doing 16th single strokes, but i have a habit when practicing to set the meternome at about 180 and practice 16ths and 32's without stopping for a half hour or more. he told me that this will "cripple" my ability to go above 240 bpm, is there any truth to this statement?

No truth at all. In fact what you're doing is exactly what is required to do what he claims is crippling, as well as build up some fine endurance. It's also what I did the week before NAMM 2007 to set the currently standing world drum speed endurance record (5132 spm in five consecutive minutes/ or 257 for five nonstop consecutive minutes).

DISCLAIMER: Before somebody jumps out and calls me an arrogant braggart lol, that final sentence is only stated to lend credence towards answering Joey's question.
 
dang world class drummers always popping out of the wood work and showing off their numbers..... so arrogant :p

thanks for the replys everyone, ive showed him this thread and i think ive more than proved my point AND hes gonna join drummerworld too lol.
 
Just for clarification, maybe I forgot this.

I was saying start slower, and get your precision right, then of course speed up and try to exceed your top tempo, in the same practice session.

Not stay slow, then never attempt, and you'll be golden.

For me, when I was trying to increase my endurance with my feet, for example, I would play slower slayer songs to warm up, then go into "rapture" for testing my boundries.

Or just play similar things, of my own imagination, then speed up.

You get the idea. That fastest drummer record is pretty intense, good job.
 
I'm confused!

If you NEVER practice at or near your top speed, how will you increase it? If your ONLY practice is well below your top speed, and you NEVER attempt to go anywhere near your top speed (which is a rather unlikely scenario, to be sure), how can you break through your ceiling?

I suppose when you're first beginning, and your technique is taking shape, then this is possible, but if we take for granted that the technique is sound, then what?

Matt, you claim that, in the week before your accomplishments (which are highly regarded!), you did NOTHING but slow, long runs (well below the 257 mark, one would assume). What about the weeks and months prior to that? Are you telling us that you NEVER attempted to go fast when training to break a speed record? This would utterly shatter my conceptions of how speed is developed! If, however, you did practice periods of fast play in between periods of slower play, then I would consider the week before the competition a "resting time" before the big race, which is something that sprinters also do in the days before a competition.

Matt, what do you make of the Mangini routine that Big Foot outlined? Does it only apply to short periods of fast play?

Joey, I didn't mean to offer unwanted advice, my apologies. I'm as interested in becoming faster as anyone!
 
I'm confused!

If you NEVER practice at or near your top speed, how will you increase it? If your ONLY practice is well below your top speed, and you NEVER attempt to go anywhere near your top speed (which is a rather unlikely scenario, to be sure), how can you break through your ceiling?

I suppose when you're first beginning, and your technique is taking shape, then this is possible, but if we take for granted that the technique is sound, then what?

Matt, you claim that, in the week before your accomplishments (which are highly regarded!), you did NOTHING but slow, long runs (well below the 257 mark, one would assume). What about the weeks and months prior to that? Are you telling us that you NEVER attempted to go fast when training to break a speed record? This would utterly shatter my conceptions of how speed is developed! If, however, you did practice periods of fast play in between periods of slower play, then I would consider the week before the competition a "resting time" before the big race, which is something that sprinters also do in the days before a competition.

Matt, what do you make of the Mangini routine that Big Foot outlined? Does it only apply to short periods of fast play?

Joey, I didn't mean to offer unwanted advice, my apologies. I'm as interested in becoming faster as anyone!

If I understood Matt right, he did long "slow" runs at around the 257 mark which is - as incredible as it might sound to mere mortals - Matts comfort zone.

I assume that Matts "sprint" tempo that he can only keep for maybe one or two bars is considerably higher than 257.

My suggestion would be: Find out the top speed that you can keep for 1 to 5 minutes. This speed is already below your absolute top speed which you can only keep for very short bursts. Now practise at around 80-90% of your 1-minute speed for very long periods of time. At that tempo you won't hurt yourself but still build up speed and endurance.

Of course it makes sense to practise some additional max-speed bursts. Especially around the drumset.
 
If I understood Matt right, he did long "slow" runs at around the 257 mark which is - as incredible as it might sound to mere mortals - Matts comfort zone.

I assume that Matts "sprint" tempo that he can only keep for maybe one or two bars is considerably higher than 257.

My suggestion would be: Find out the top speed that you can keep for 1 to 5 minutes. This speed is already below your absolute top speed which you can only keep for very short bursts. Now practise at around 80-90% of your 1-minute speed for very long periods of time. At that tempo you won't hurt yourself but still build up speed and endurance.

Of course it makes sense to practise some additional max-speed bursts. Especially around the drumset.

Yeah, Lutz I agree with all that, minus of course the mere mortal thing lol.

As is the case sometimes with these kinds of threads they go off track just a little, even when the conversation is entirely innocent and civil. I think it's just the nature of the beast. See this is what Joey specifically qualified then asked:

i have a habit when practicing to set the meternome at about 180 and practice 16ths and 32's without stopping for a half hour or more. he told me that this will "cripple" my ability to go above 240 bpm, is there any truth to this statement?

Lutz is right... 250-260 was my extended workout tempo when I used to do this stuff, and it was a small part of my extended practice routine. In the early days of single stroke investigation, my old Romanian mentor Vlad Popescu had me playing singles continuously for ten minutes or more when I was as young as 12. It became a ritual I got used to long before I thought of it within the context of increased speed. In fact I didn't know I had any kind of noteworthy speed until I used a Drumometer because I always figured I was fooling myself when I practiced with a metronome anyway.

You also have to remember that when those big world comps were popular a few years ago that several of us were performing one minute practice runs in the privacy of our own homes at 300 on a regular basis. Then of course it was higher if you were discussing short bursts/comp scores were always lower due to nerves, pressure, conditions etc/.

Those shorter speeds were absolutely made possible by the lower tempo extended practice because endurance is about getting the uniformity of technique together. You can't play fast for long stretches (like 5 minutes) without uniform technique. Once your technique becomes predictable then all things are possible. Yes, old style competitors capable of routine 300 can even play a little sloppy and still pull off 1100s. In fact anyone who has seen my trad grip record run knows it was a mess at times, and I've admitted as much. But those long stretches where it clicked was totally due to getting it together for extended periods at those lower speeds.

Let me also say that I believe that all of this goes out the window when using push pull. IMO you don't build endurance with that technique. You are only able to play faster for shorter periods of time. That is why I believe that a time will come when a traditional singles guy will take the endurance record, but it will never happen with a push pull guy. I started doing all the things Joey described for the increased endurance anyway. So that's why I was never interested in that technique and why I see it as limited in a number of regards. Now I am certain there are some that will disagree. However, I feel that after all this time of dealing with this topic that I have a right to it, and that it should properly considered.

And thanks for the really good questions brentcn. You got me to think about some things.
 
Endurance runs alone certainly won't diminish your speed and will hone your technique to perfection to enable those top speeds to increase, but it won't enable you to really push the top speed of your playing unless you are actually doing sprints as well. I'm sure Matty, Tom etc did a lot of perfection through endurance, but then used that perfection to increase their top speed by doing sprints and speed runs too. It might make you able to play faster a little through a kind of osmosis but if you want to increase your top speed significantly, then you need to do both. Sprint and endurance.

Endurance is more important in general I feel as it does a few things; One is that it solidifies your technique and perfects (or brings out imperfections if you practice badly) all the small motions that you need to be 100% to play very fast. That's the most important. Two, it is closer to real playing situations. Your playing is often at an average throughout grooves etc with small bursts of speed for fills, fast tunes, so training endurance and sprint runs is closer to real playing.

But, to answer the question in my opinion; No, it won't. It will perfect your technique and fine tune all the small motions that you need to be as good as possible to play fast and you can't get them any other way. However, if you never try to go past 200bpm in 16ths and just play long endurance runs below that I have no doubt that you will never increase your top speed much. But, that has nothing to do with the endurance runs and everything to do with just not playing/practicing faster. Doing an endurance run doesn't hurt your speed. It might not increase your top speed, but it definitely won't hurt it either and will only enable you to go faster when you do practice sprints because of the fine tuning of small motions through those endurance runs.
 
Matt, what do you make of the Mangini routine that Big Foot outlined? Does it only apply to short periods of fast play?
I see a lot of merit in applying Magadini's concepts/ assuming you didn't mean Mangini/ But, when you're asking some of us old speed freaks from those competition times, I intentionally avoided maximum practice speeds except for the smallest increments, say one or two brief max out runs per day.

First I didn't see the need in doing it, but most important I wasn't going to get an idiot's case of carpal tunnel. See, what I think people don't realize is how ridiculous the speeds had gotten for straight ahead singles by that time. Art Verdi's short bursts for example were regularly being clocked faster than the craziest stuff seen in the famous Buddy Rich 1970 white turtleneck video after it had been run through a computer. Yes I know that you can't compare Rich's spontaneous set creativity with a singular objective on a pad, but I'm only saying that to give you a point of reference.

Back then everybody was doing routine warmup stuff at 250 and above, while now you see the new push pull guys try to go even faster. But the difference in straight ahead singles playing and push pull was the exertion factor. Straight ahead is tougher on you physically. Now I'm betting at least one guy disagrees with me there, but I think most would agree with me. With that said, myself and others were very mindful of what Mike Mangini used to believe about the extreme thresh- hold for straight ahead playing. I think he believed you would max out at around 325, before you did really bad things to yourself.

So that's why I for instance probably took things very cautiously back then. I just don't think people sometimes understand how crazy all that had gotten. I used to watch Art, Mangini, Tom Grosset, Seth Davis etc, and their hands even in warmups were this wild looking blur, although totally controlled. Those speeds were just something different. We used to hear people say I know so and so who plays faster and we would just roll our eyes, and so did guys like Jim Chapin who hung around the venues for hours. I remember when I heard Jotan Afanador do that stuff and his sticks would make this whiiiiiirrrrrriiiing sound. It was like a little helicopter. When I first saw Tom compete his sound was exactly the same. Those guys didn't want to do a lot of extra pushing because the regular effort was already out there enough.

And even then for all that great care, there was Art, the 10 second short burst world record holder getting out of comps before everyone else. You just instinctively felt he knew he was doing something too dangerous.

However with all that said, if you're talking about working up to very, very strong but entirely versatile/practical thresh-holds like 240-250 then yeah, sure why not taking a couple of more chances? But back then I wasn't going to play physically damaging games in 300 territory.
 
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