The latest addition to the FREE section of ALTIS 360 comes courtesy of Clive Brewer and his presentation titled, Developing Speed in a Chaotic Movement Context.
Clive has 25 years of experience coaching a variety of sporting populations with most of his work coming at the professional level in Rugby, Soccer, and Baseball. You can get an understanding of what Clive values from this quote early in the video…
“I became a much better strength coach when I started conversing with the medical staff and understood how they view the human body.”
As you can imagine, Clive speaks on the integration that must occur within performance teams – this includes the athletes! As Clive says, “Our job is to give athletes the tools to solve problems.”
This highlights his approach to coaching, particularly within the professional settings. It is clear he operates more as ‘Coach as Facilitator’ when developing speed in chaotic contexts.
But what does this look like in practice?
Well, that is the beauty of this presentation. It features a case study from professional soccer and contains concrete examples of how Clive develops speed in the athletes he works with – which he defines as a, “physical quality that athletes use to create a competitive advantage by exploiting space; the hardest capacity to defeat in a sporting context.”
The beginning of the process involves delineating between pain, dysfunction, deficiency, and competency. We must meet the athlete where they are at. Clive’s approach then is to TREAT pain, CORRECT dysfunction, TRAIN deficiency, and LOAD competency.
Regarding the case study highlighted within the presentation, the athlete in question was already checking a few boxes from his sport specific training. Namely, visual scanning, anticipation, situational knowledge, as well as lower body qualities specific to change of direction (strength, power, RFD, etc.).
This led Clive to focus on pattern recognition, reaction time, linear sprint speed, and sprint mechanics.
This approach is underpinned by a couple of key tenets from Clive:
1. Execution before speed – HOW they perform before how fast
2. Objectives determine methods
Hopefully this short article provides an introduction to Clive as a coach and the presentation he provided. Check out the video HERE to find specific examples such as how he alters preparation sessions based on objectives, how he layers complexity with intensity to determine progressions, specific examples of drills he utilizes, and much more!
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