'Train slow - Best slow' Have you heard this saying before? I want to give credit to legendary strength & conditioning coach Al Vermeil as he's been known to have a number of original saying related to training. Another one I know for sure Al said was related to plyos where he said 'the bigger the athlete the smaller the hurdle' (or box). But back to the original statement this has to do with the specificity of training. If you are an athlete that requires speed it is important to use movement, drills and exercises that develop the capacity of the athlete to move and perform at a high velocity. And typically what happens is people watch YouTube videos of people performing insanely high box jumps or their favourite athlete is featured in a commercial doing something explosive. All of a sudden everyone wants to start there. Day 1 and they want to do max height box jumps, plyos, Olympic lifts and anything else that is worthy of a facebook post. Let's face it there aren't too many 'likes' for someone being able to hold a proper plank for 60 seconds. So do we really have to 'go big or go home'? Is there value to slowing things down a bit? Can you still achieve your potential without going all out all the time? The answer to all of these is No-Yes-Yes. In particular there are a couple of times when slower is better. In particular when you are performing stability or balance drills there is more benefit to slowing things down. Consider the following couple of scenarios. Slowing Down Plyometrics An athlete could be performing Heidens, bounding from one leg to the other. This is a great drill to develop power in the frontal plane. When this drill is performed with...