Speedlab
A new collaboration between Speedworks, headed up by world renowned speed coach Jonas Dodoo and Loughborough University, the world’s leading university for sport. This programme is specifically designed to build effective and efficient players and athletes, we will teach you the techniques necessary to maximise explosive strength, speed and robustness.
Speedworks and Loughborough Sport
Speedworks is a team of highly experienced coaches, working at all levels of performance. Working alongside the performance support team at Loughborough University gives a unique combination of coaching prowess and performance support.You will have access to a team well versed with creating, supporting and working with Olympic medallists, world cup finalists, world champions and supporting athletes return to performance post injury.
Speed for team sports
The importance of sprinting in football, rugby and many other sports has considerably increased in volume, intensity, and density within the domestic and at international level. Team sports players need a proficient combination of acceleration, deceleration, change of direction and curved running to excel at their sport. The world class player has the “first step acceleration” critical to winning duels, the “curvilinearspeed“ required to create and close down space, as well as the “repeat sprintability” required to thrive during intense match phases.
Speed is a skill and must be trained like one. Skill and position coaches will be trying to incorporate the player/athletes current speed into specific technical actions using tactical scenarios from the game. The support team are tasked with increasing underpinning physical qualities for speed and robustness, further develop these into out and out acceleration and speed, and then transfer this to the specific actions through the use of game-speed. The teams with the best player development systems both increase the readiness and robustness of each player, but also improve their capacity to improve in game related actions.
We provide a full compliment of field/lab based analysis in order to measure player physical capabilities as well as a team of experts who can provide solutions to meet the sport specific as well as position specific needs.
Our aim is to simply increase transfer of training into competition. Fitter, faster and more coordinated players are more likely to be healthier, more confident and robust. Return to your clubs a more valuable player than when you left.
Jonas is a brilliant coach. He has a unique ability to quickly develop rapport with his players and operates with a strong methodology. He has good observational skills which make him a great person to bring into the team.
Running conditioning - running re-education
Returning from injury and/or preparing for a sharp increase in training load can be a challenging process. The more severe and chronic the injury the harder the athlete has to work to re-coordinate themselves away from their pain induced inhibitions and towards their performance goals. Many athletes can get stuck in an “injury, return to play, re-injury” cycle where either programming error or movement inhibitions set the stage for further issues. We suggest a methodical system for addressing this.
Whether you are a heel strike or forefoot runner, it’s important to work on reactivity, limb exchange and intersegmental co-ordination; simply put, how you connect your hips, knees, ankle and foot with the ground. This is a fundamental movement that supports acceleration, sprinting, change of direction and even force production during kicking and passing.
Our approach to running conditioning is a systematic approach to developing game related underpinning physical qualities dove tailed with movement re-education. The system is developed for anyone who aims to run fast and far whilst staying injury free.
The system
Our experiences in elite sport have honed our ability to identify ‘the real problem’ so that we can provide real solutions. Regardless of your sports level, you deserve a coach with a program that can provide measurable results and can be clear where further improvement will come from.
Speed profile
Step to step analysis of sprinting is an advanced process often reserved for the laboratory or top-end elite athletes/players. Collecting detailed kinetic and kinematic information can be time-consuming and further analysis of the data can become confusing. Let us help you make sense of sprint analysis.
There are various major benefits that can be realised through the detailed analysis of your running technique. Coaching cues and feedback can be more specific, training interventions can be more complimentary to your needs, and small to large improvements can be identified clearly. Through this analysis you can begin to remove large amounts of error from your training and speed up the development process.
We provide a world class sprint assessment which can be performed indoors on a track or out on the field. We will teach you our processes to video collection, error detection and correction.
Once registered, all members will undergo a consultation with one of our team, alongside a movement assessment which guides the prescription of our training system. Each programme consists of a technical, specific strength, general strength and running conditioning component. Using your assessment, we can devise a programme that is compatible and complimentary, each detail tailored to maximise your development in a synchronised approach.
Technical development
Not all players are known for being fast, but every player can get faster. Every single person, young or old, football player or a marathon runner can work on specific techniques to make themselves more effective and efficient at whatever task they are trying to improve in.
Complex training doesn’t have to be complicated. Developing the technique for acceleration, deceleration, max velocity, or consistent running at sub-maximal speeds is a simple process of error detection and correction.
We will watch you run and jump, then intervene with coaching cues, video feedback and specific drills to address your movement needs. In fact, the entirety of our programme is designed to complement your technical goals by addressing your physical limitations.
Strength and conditioning
Our approach to strength and conditioning is led by our philosophy on movements and muscles. We have developed a unique decision-making framework combining research from physiotherapy, strength and conditioning, physiology and biomechanics, consolidated with the experience of coaching and rehabbing the fastest players and athletes.
Let us demystify strength training for speed. Our framework includes a library of methods for teaching and training. Enabling us to create programmes and packages that suit the needs of our clients and can evolve around the microcycle design and training system applied at their clubs, regardless of their sport, level of performance, goals or objectives.
Sports medicine
Within our system we endeavour to support preparation at the highest level. There is an expectation that the harder and more regular you train, there will be wear and tear on the athletes body. We bring balance to this by integrated sports medicine within our training process. This means we have a team of therapists who work with our coach’s to identify movement specific ‘work ons’, and develop manual therapy as well as exercise routines to enhance short-long term performance.
Our Physiotherapy and Osteopathy team may be seen pitch/track side, not just for first aid, but to observe and understand the bio mechanical and physical stress each players “style” creates. A deep understanding of movement allows us to better prescribe passive and active interventions.
The programme
The programme is developed to allow you to choose the speed sessions which will have the most impact on your individual performance and sport. Each session is designed to form a programme of training to support your specific development across a period of time.
Speed sessions can be taken on their own, with additional speed profiling or with additional strength and conditioning training in our world-class elite training centre, Powerbase. The strength and conditioning sessions are all developed specifically to support each individual speed session and athlete. With S&C support sessions are split with a 2 hour track session in the morining and 2 hour S&C session in the afternoon.
Speed sessions
- Acceleration session. This session will have a focus on horizontal force production and explosive strength which contributes specially to initial acceleration.
- Maximum velocity. This session will have a focus on development of postures and reflexes required to sprint efficiently.
- Breaking strength and change of direction. This session focuses on the ability to decelerate and rapidly reaccelerate from a range of directions and positions.
- Technical endurance and running conditioning. The session will focus on achieving and then maintaining appropriate postures and positions that support running economy.
- Running rehab / re-education. Post injury or returning to play after a lengthy break requires careful step like progression in running. This session will provide the athlete with confidence to strike the ground and help reset motor patterns to accelerate return to play and increase performance potential.
On request each of the sessions can include sport specific scenarios and may also vary in intensity based on the readiness of the athlete.
With face to face sessions running 3-days a week, there are various avenues to engage with our performance programme; be it one-off sessions, or an entire week’s programme with the addition of distance learning when off-site. For those who cannot make on-site sessions there is an option to be coached virtually through video calls.
All clients will gain access to distance learning materials through our TrueCoach app. This will give you detailed written programs and video instructions for all the extra training you will be asked to do between our sessions.
All players will be given exposure to cutting-edge motion analysis testing and will receive a bespoke speed profile which can be used for regular reflection and progress records.
Programmes and pricing
- Short session, 1 hour, includes one speed session. £150 inc VAT
- Medium session, 2 hours, includes one speed session with speed profiling. £300 inc VAT
- Long session, 2 hour speed session with speed profiling, plus 2 hour S&C session. £400 inc VAT
Jonas fundamentally understands how to develop players to move quicker, more efficiently and to earn the right to run faster than they have ever done before, regardless of the stage in their career.