Episode #18 - James Wild: Assessing, Evaluating & Improving Speed

James is a strength and conditioning coach, researcher, professor, and consultant - mainly for all things speed, agility, and power development. In this episode we talk about his work with team sport athletes and how he goes about assessing, evaluating, and then improving speed.  He also talks about how mechanics and technical aspects of sprinting differ between team sport athletes and actual track athletes. 
Overall, this is a great episode and James is very knowledgable in the the mechanics and literature for speed development. 

Favorite Quotes

• "Strength training is only a part of the much bigger picture when it comes to speed"
• "Drills are there to reinforce technical positions"
• "Speed = Magnitude of force, direction of force, RFD"
• "Most speed training over-emphasizes the magnitude of force and neglects the direction and rate of those forces"
• "I evaluate F-V profiles, hip extension torque for horizontal vs vertical profiles, and reactive strength/ankle stiffness in my athletes. This way I know specifically what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how to attack them"
• "Sprint drills should create context and feeling.  Attach a feeling, use film, and bridge the drills to later sprints"
• "Team sport athletes typically lack hip flexion angles, body angles, RFD compared to track athletes, but we also have to understand that sometimes these are a product of the sport and obtaining ideal sprinting technique isn't conducive to team sports"
  
• "I'd bring Arny (Arnold schwarzenegger), Steven Seagal, and Jean Claude Van Damme to dinner - some kick ass dudes"

Social Media

• Twitter - @widly_jj