Anaerobic Speed Reserve (ASR) was the topic of a PhD that Dr. Gareth Sandford launched via a world tour of high performance training environments. During this time, Gareth logged 42,000 miles while visiting 33 performance centers and collaborating with 80 coaches and 200 athletes!

Learn more about Anaerobic Speed Reserve with this 3 minute video introduction.

Gareth and I previously recorded two podcasts on ASR for ALTIS. In the first episode we provide a ‘big picture’ perspective and the second episode gets more into the practical application.

Since that time there has been a lot of interest from various team sport organizations into Gareth’s work. Phil Scott, S&C Coach from England Cricket, joined us to share his experiences in applying the anaerobic speed reserve to his conditioning practice.

Show Notes:

0:00 – Introductions
3:28 – Anaerobic speed reserve recap and the speed reserve ratio application in team sport
5:40 – Performance demands of elite Cricket –test matches, one day games and twenty20 format.
10:28 – Generalists vs specialists across game formats
11:15 – Parallels of concurrent aerobic and neuromuscular demands across other team sports, accelerations/decelerations/ground reaction force demand
14:03 – Historical conditioning methods in Cricket
16:57 – How did you apply Anaerobic Speed Reserve testing principles in Cricket? What were your learnings?
23:30 – Assessing maximal aerobic speed in team sport athletes with a 2km distance – considerations, pro’s and con’s
26:16 – Phil unpacks speed reserve ratio applications on athlete profiles for him and county coaches
31:09 – Gareth on interpreting profiles relative to performance demands – creating team discussions
35:25 – How much variability do you see of athlete profiles within the same position on the team?
39:27 – How do team sport speed reserve ratio variables compare to track and field benchmarks?
41:22 – Case study examples of individualizing training according to their speed reserve ratio profile
43:30 – Athlete buy in and adaptation with the speed reserve ratio profiling
44:37 – How have you adjusted your programming with this testing?
46:29 – Blending in maximal sprinting speed amongst other stimulus and technical/tactical demands
47:28 – Reflections on maximal sprinting speed stimulus and injury
51:10 – Closing reflections on practical applications of athlete profiling using anaerobic speed reserve

And listen to the full conversation here…

Thanks to Gareth and Phil for sharing their expertise and experiences in this area.

You can follow them on Twitter @Gareth_Sandford and @pcfscott.

For more on anaerobic speed reserve, check out Dr. Sandford’s ResearchGate profile.