Expert Insights & Learning
🎙️ Jonas Dodu, a world-renowned Sprints and Speed Coach, shares insights from working with elite athletes across track and field, football, rugby, and American sports.
💡 Embrace continuous learning from injuries, as working with physios provides quick feedback and reveals opportunities to integrate performance-based training into rehab.
🧠 View injuries as an "opportunity" to learn about system development, similar to a traffic light system (red, amber, green) providing information to focus attention and evolve processes.
📊 Implement a good early athlete reporting system and screening processes where testing is training and training is testing, providing daily information on athlete function.

Biomechanics of Speed
🏃‍♂️ Define sprinting as applying "large forces in a short amount of time in the right direction", with focus on creating pre-tension in the air for a high peak force on ground contact, also known as "spike your ground contact."
🔄 Understand limb coordination through "The Switch" (agonist-antagonist timing for one limb) and "The Scissor" (coordination of two limbs for thigh angular acceleration and velocity).
🦵 Focus on "trunk discipline," "shin discipline," and "bum before back" in acceleration and upright running, emphasizing a proximal to distal extension pattern where the glutes drive movement.
👀 Observe for changes from an athlete's normal movement patterns, such as altered range of motion, compensatory actions (flaring, side bending), or poor ground reaction to identify potential issues.

Injury & Rehab Philosophy
🩹 Keep the "system alive" during early rehab by continuing non-contraindicated activities, focusing on maintaining reactivity, firing patterns, and correcting new compensation strategies immediately.
💡 Prioritize pelvis control during hamstring rehab, as hamstrings often compensate for locomotor tasks and pelvis instability; addressing the pelvis is as crucial as the hamstring tissue itself.
🏋️‍♀️ Train athletes "harder during rehab" by utilizing double days to compensate for reduced game load, emphasizing quality movement and challenging their ability to solve movement puzzles.
🎯 Apply the "find a way" approach to rehab, identifying alternative ways to load and train muscle groups (e.g., hip thrusts for proximal hamstring) to respect tissue healing while keeping the system engaged.

Optimizing Strength & Conditioning
🏋️‍♂️ Recognize that the "way you get stronger" can either limit or enhance speed, especially after initial gains from general strength training, and focus on specific components like eccentric cycle, reactivity, and RFD.
🎯 Understand that exercise selection is critical, as exercises can make athletes stronger but might detract from specific performance goals if they reinforce poor movement patterns (e.g., back-driven squat affecting hip drive).
🔄 Integrate a mix of training modalities (slow lifting, barefoot walking, general circuits, heavy lifting, plyometrics, lateral, and rotational movements), with proportions shifting from general to specific as the season progresses.
🚫 Differentiate between gym and field work: the "gym is for slow heavy movements, work capacity, and injury prevention", while speed work is for the track, with a heuristic of "we gym to jump."

Structured Speed Development
📈 Implement a "short to long" progression for speed training, starting with shorter, lower intensity sprints and drills in early phases (teaching), moving to more specific loads and volumes (training), and finally game-like speeds and chaotic environments (transfer).
🏃‍♀️ Utilize dribble/drill conditioning in early phases to build hamstring, pelvis, and calf capacity through repetitive, elastic, and ballistic drills under fatiguing conditions.
🔄 Replace traditional, low-intensity "plodding" with drill conditioning to achieve aerobic adaptations while reinforcing desired movement patterns (e.g., ankle stiffness, pelvis control) more efficiently.
⏱️ Gradually increase volume and intensity in drill conditioning by varying distances (e.g., 10m to 40m) and reducing rest periods, ensuring quality of movement is maintained even under fatigue.

Key Points & Insights
➡️ View injury as an opportunity to evolve training processes, using feedback from pain and compensation as data points for intervention and adaptation.
➡️ Prioritize pelvis control in both performance and rehab; a stable and well-controlled pelvis is foundational to efficient sprinting and injury prevention, often more critical than isolated muscle strength.
➡️ Emphasize "bum before back" as a core principle for hip extension, ensuring glute-driven movement and preventing compensatory lumbar spine extension.
➡️ Integrate dribble/drill conditioning into training to build volume and load for ballistic, elastic actions under fatigue, improving speed endurance and technical proficiency.

📸 Video summarized with SummaryTube.com on Aug 31, 2025, 04:52 UTC