This document discusses increasing drumming speed, endurance, and power through focused exercises. It covers warm up exercises to prepare the body, as well as exercises to build each skill individually, such as the 4-4-8 for measuring maximum speed. Proper technique is emphasized to avoid developing movement vices. Gradually increasing the challenge and allowing for rest between practices is advised to optimize progress and avoid injury.
5. +Speed +Endurance +Power
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Acknowledgments
Everyone who contribuited in the creation of this book.
To my teachers for their patience.
To my drummer coleagues for the fellowship.
To my students, coleagues from bands and brands (Dream Cym-
bals, ZZ percusión, Harmonic Stop, ElPeñon Hardware, RB drums,
Bb drums, Horizont Drumheads, Crash Head) for trusting in my
work and giving your support.
To my parents, because without them this wouldn’t be possible.
THANK YOU.
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Warm Up
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The warm up is the most important tool to increase our perfor-
mance and diminish the possibilities of getting injured.
The blood vessels dilate. Why is this important? Because the blood
transports the nutrients and temperature rises in the zone, which
increases the elasticity of tendons and muscles.
For doing this we have to start an augmentation of the activity gra-
dually, avoiding the impact at first (using sticks and pad, jumping,
etc.) and then yes, using impact to finish with the body conditio-
ning.
The warm up mast be accomplished always, mostly if the activity
we have next is very demanding or the temperature of the place is
low.
What is it or what happens during
the warm up?
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Speed
At the clinics I usually ask people what speed is. And the most
common answer is “how fast we can play”, and yes, that is partia-
lly correct, but talking about the execution of a movement, a most
accurate answer is:
So speed comes from our nervous system.
It is really common for drummers to get stuck with this issue and
end up frustrated as crashing with a wall, a limit, not knowing how
to overcome this.
The first thing we need to know is that speed is developed with
muscle memory, and that the nervous system, as the rest of the
body, suffers from stress, gets irritated, and therefore needs rest.
The speed is how fast our brain can
coordinate the muscles to perform an
action
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Let’s imagine that the part of our brain which controls our mo-
vements is one big library full of instructions, that every time we
move we generate a new book, and the librarian is very lazy: he
never looks up for the best version of every book, he just grabs the
first that he finds.
So every book it’s an order to coordinate muscles, for example the-
re’s the book “Strong hit right hand German grip”. If we have only
one edition of this hit, to the librarian will be very easy to find
always the same really fast, but… What if we had a lot of inefficient
editions? The librarian would give us any edition, just to bring us
the first that he finds, here’s where troubles begin.
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Different orders are sent to the muscles, therefore the tensions, the
obstacles, the hits badly done and possibly injuries. In exchange,
if we always go by the efficient order, and we save that same or-
der over and over again, the librarian will possibly always find the
same one and make it quicker every time, so the muscles will get
the correct order in a shorter time and be executed with no pro-
blems.
One very important detail regarding muscular memory, is that
the same, is lost, so in process of increasing our speed, or learning
a movement it is advised not to let more than 48 hours between
practices.
This lead us to an increase of our speed.
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Now, what if what we saved is wrong? Well, this generates a “move-
ment vice”, translation, a movement that is going to be made auto-
matically when we don’t want to, even if we’re trying to correct it.
For example, “Strong beat right hand German grip”, lets say a rota-
tion is produced and shouldn’t be present in that move, and if we
try to make it right, that rotation still goes on.
To correct this, we must practice the movement correctly, slowly,
and repetitive, with all of our attention focused in how we’re ma-
king it.
This is a movement vice, this won’t allow us
to make progress.
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Exercises
R R R R L L L L R R R R R R R R L L L L R R R R L L L L L L L L
4- 4- 8
The 4-4-8 is an excelent exercise to develop and measure maxi-
mum speed. It is based in few repetitions with every hand (the 4’s)
and an augmentation in the number of repetitions of the moves in
the part of minimal demand in resistance (the 8). So we’re going to
be able to notice if we can actualy coordinate that movement at the
speed of our metronome, and also if we can keep it up for a period
of time.
This exercise is usefull to work our wrists or fingers separately.
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1 y 1
R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L
The 1-1 exercise serves as much for speed as for resistance. It must
be performed on a pad or a surface that hace a nice reboun, we’re
not working on power (capability) but muscular memory.
We’re performing the exercise with a continuity and very slowly,
simulating the movements we would do at higher speeds.
Then, we speed up gradually, until errors appear.
From then on we will only do one hand at a time, in
eighth notes so we can keep speeding up, because the problem is
not that we cannot go faster, but the fact that we cannot coordinate
both of our hands at that speed.
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The increase of speed must be gradual (3 to 5 bpm approximately
every augment, at very high speeds, even less).
By very high speeds is meant 230 bpm and above doing 16th notes
in 1 and 1 or 8th notes with only one hand.
Duration of the exercises: Approximately 30 seconds.
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Endurance
The resistance is the capacity of the body to keep one or more ac-
tivities during a period of time or performing a certain volume of
work.
This characteristic depends on various factors involved in the acti-
vity:
Motor unit + Energy + Metabolism + Rest + Work material
Motor unit: We’ll call this to the muscle or muscular group which
are used in the task to do. Every muscle has characteristics of it’s
own, being quantity and quality of it’s fibers, type of fibers, energy
reserve, elasticity, fatigue, time of recovery, etc.
And we’re not counting in the possibility of lesions or difficulties of
other kind, as for example shortened tendons.
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Energy: Fuel, disponibility and amount of it. Our body saves ener-
gy as glucose in blood, glycogen in the muscles and in the liver,
and fat in the fat cells.
Glucose is the basic source of energy and glycogen, a backup of
glucose, it is composed by ten thousand molecules of glucose.
When glucose diminishes glycogen is used to replace it. That’s why
to increase resistance it is recommended not to ingest other than
water during the activity and after at least half an hour later.
Glucose Glycogen Fat
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Glucose Glycogen Fat
As glucose decreases, the glycogen is degraded in molecules of glu-
cose and enters the stream of blood, so the muscle can use it.
And when the glycogen is low, the same effect occurs with fat.
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Glucose Glycogen Fat
And when we finish the activity, if we respect the fact that we
shouldn’t ingest any food (or sugars in general), the process will
end, stabilize and leave a value of glucose that is beneficial to us.
All of this talking about healthy people, with no problems regar-
ding sugar levels in blood, or problems with it, for example diabe-
tes. (If you have something like that, ask to a doctor). This fuels /
sources of energy, come from the food we ingest, that’s why you’ll
notice the importance of a good nutrition.
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Metabolism: It is composed by anabolism and catabolism. The ana-
bolism part is construction, creation of reserve, etc. The catabolism
part is destruction, generation of energy, etc. It is directly linked to
the energy / fuel part. For the muscles to receive energy, glucose is
catabolized. Then metabolic diseases have direct influence on our
efficiency, for example hypothyroidism.
Physical wear / Fatigue / Irritation: The activity doesn’t only pro-
duce an augmentation in the glucose consumption, but a wear and
tear of the physical part involved, discard creation and in the case
of not having rest the muscle fibers can get damaged in excess, or
irritating the nerves and producing injuries; achieving the opposite
effect. On average, the muscle needs 48 to 72 hours (or more) of
rest to regenerate, which is why once a week a rest is needed, most-
ly from impact repetition.
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Work material: Even if it doesn’t look like that, quality of sticks,
tension and configuration of our pedals, tension of patches and
the distribution of the drums, is also influential. For example, an
ergonomic distribution saves us from issues and unnecessary mo-
vements, and some bad quality sticks, vibrate and can injure ten-
dons, producing the well-known tendonitis.
With Nahuel Gauna, friend and colleague, at Dream Cymbals
showroom, Argentina.
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Exercises
R R R R R R R R L L L L L L L L R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R
L L L L L L L L R R R R R R R R L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L
8 - 8 - 16
As the 4-4-8, this exercise serves to measure what speed we are
comfortable at for a prolonged job and to increase bit by bit our
resistance at high speeds.
This must be done on a pad or a surface with a good rebound, me-
tronome, starting very slow, and gaining speed gradually until the
“16” starts having problems.
Maintain (minimum) for a minute.
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1 y 1
R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L
The 1 and 1 for resistance must be done with different surfaces of
rebound.
-In the air. Yes, the air.
-Then on something without any rebound, like a pillow.
-On the floor tom.
-On the snare drum or the pad.
Always stopping for a minute (per clock) between the different
possibilities of rebound. The speed of work must be comfortable,
approximately the 50% of the maximum speed we can handle. In
the case of the pad, work for a longer period, at 75% of maximum
speed on wrists and then at 75% of speed on fingers, allowing the
sticks to go up as much as possible. At a lower percentage of speed,
higher the amount of time of continuous work.
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Picture with Nicolas Della Vedova in his program Bateria TV.
“Metalhead’s face” Thanks Nico for the invitation!
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Power
Power is a term not usually heard as an issue addressed by drum-
mers in general, but is something that is asked continually. Nowa-
days, playing fast and loud at the same time, is a basic requirement
to fulfill, and lots of drummers lose potency during the time pla-
ying.
This kind of job must be exercised after a good conditioning with
the speed and resistance exercises, especially the ones of resistance
of long duration. Meaning, after a few months of constantly exerci-
sing/practicing in a disciplined way.
Power would be the capacity of playing at a loud
volume, at high speed during a long period of
time.
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The exercises to be done would be the same ones for speed and
resistance, but always with the wider angle possible and at a high
volume.
The only difference with the ones for resistance, is that we can di-
minish the amount of time, but our speed must get higher trying to
get to our 100% of maximum speed.
It is recommended that we acknowledge our bodies very well to
avoid lesions, in the case of having a strange sensation, a minimum
pain, diminish the intensity and then stop. The ideal thing would
be not to get to the pain sensation, because pain is an indicator of
something injured, even if it is minimal.
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Cool Down
Cool down, is another thing we don’t talk about too much, but it’s
got to do with everything we’ve spoken about in this book.
Cooling down you avoid lesions, you stabilize and cleanse the
body… Basically you recondition the body for the repose state, af-
ter having a very intense activity.
A really easy example is, when we’re done playing, we feel tired,
heaviness, and then, after a while that sensation goes away, well,
that’s our kidneys filtrating every waste we had in our blood, and
our body stabilized the lack of, for instance, glucose. Now, I guess
this might have happened to you or someone you know, that after
playing, you threw yourself on a sofa, or any place, very badly ac-
commodated and when you “got cold” a pain appeared at that part
that was not comfortable. That happens because we lose some elas-
ticity and, when we’re still warm we feel this thing less.
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The easier way of cooling down is performing activity in a lower
proportion than done before, and diminishing its intensity gra-
dually, until we get to the point of repose. For example, keep wal-
king and moving our hands with the sticks but getting slower and
slower.
It is advised that this part of the activity is taken as seriously as the
Warm Up.
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