Game-Speed Model

HOW THE WORLD’S TOP SPEED COACHES

IMPACT PLAYING THE GAME FASTER

WWW.ALTIS.WORLD | @ALTIS
THE ALTIS GAME-SPEED MODEL
HOW THE WORLD’S TOP SPEED COACHES IMPACT PLAYING THE GAME FASTER

SPEED

ENERGETICALLY DETERMINED INFORMATION-ORIENTED

(CONDITIONING) ABILITIES (COORDINATIVE) SKILLS

LINEAR SPEED

HIGH INTENSITY MAXIMAL SPRINT

ACCELERATION MANEUVERABILITY
SPEED SPEED

MODERATE AGILITY-COD
INTENSITY SPEED SPEED

GAME-SPEED
ENDURING SPEED DECISION-MAKING SPEED

LOW INTENSITY DECELERATION

SPEED SPEED

MAXIMAL
STARTING SPEED
AEROBIC SPEED
SYNCHRONIZED OBJECT CONTROL
TEAM SPEED SPEED

We designed the ALTIS Game-Speed Model to better organize the many types of speed
we typically see in team sport, from enduring speeds, to linear speeds, to decision-
making speeds, and finally to coordinated, holistic speeds.

In total, there are 12 different categories of speed, and only through understanding
these categories in detail, can you impact how your athletes play the game!

Game Speed Model: For more check out the Need For Speed Course 2
DOES SPRINT TRAINING MAKE YOUR PLAYERS PLAY THEIR SPORT BETTER?

Well - that depends!

The ALTIS Game-Speed Model tells you what it depends upon — helping you determine
what type of speed is relevant to the game you’re training your players for. It includes:

• 2 primary speed types

• 3 general speed categories

• 10 specific speed sub-categories, and

• 2 holistic speed categories

Game Speed Model: For more check out the Need For Speed Course 1
LEVEL 1
Speed is organized into energetically-determined (conditioning) abilities, and
information-oriented (coordinative) skills.

This distinction between an ‘ability’ and a ‘skill’ is critical, and is key to understanding
the difference between track-speed and game-speed.

Coaches and sport scientists have for decades described movement skills in terms of the
motor abilities that underpin them. While there are many definitions of abilities and
skills, most refer to this hierarchical relationship – where a motor ability forms the
foundation of a movement skill.

For example, it’s thought that the physical motor ability of strength underpins the
movement skill required by performing a power clean, and the perceptual motor
ability of reaction time underpins the movement skill required by reacting to the snap
of the ball in American football.

By training your players to run faster fly-10s, you can affect their speed-ability, but you
do not affect their speed-skill. For that to happen, the player requires information to
interact with, which is key to understanding the ALTIS Game-Speed Model.

An ability is our capacity to move; a skill is the degree to which we interact with the
information provided within our dynamic environment

Game Speed Model: For more check out the Need For Speed Course 2
LEVEL 2
Speed is further categorized into 3 sub-categories, with varying levels of information:

1 Enduring Speed

2 Linear Speed

3 Decision-making Speed

ENDURING SPEED
How many games are won or lost during the dying moments of a game? What is often
the determining factor between who loses and who wins?

You got it - the team that has retained their speed the longest!

‘Enduring speed’ is the ability to maintain and repeat a range of speed intensities that
players will typically encounter over the course of a game.

There is evidence to show that more successful teams are better able to retain higher
average intensities over the final quarter of a game than less-successful teams. These
are the ‘critical periods’ that so often separate the winners from the losers, such as:
• In the 4th quarter, the American football cornerback struggles to keep up with the
speedy wide receiver, who sprints by for a game-winning touchdown
• With 10 minutes to play, the rugby league starting prop lacks the legs to maintain
the necessary defensive line speed, and misses the tackle, leading to a match-
winning try
• The soccer winger pulls up with a hamstring injury as he sprints to chase a ball
chipped in behind in the 85th minute of a game, and misses the opportunity to go
in one-on-one on the goalkeeper to win the game

The number of high-intensity efforts, as well as the average intensity of those efforts,
tends to drop significantly over the last quarter of a game

Game Speed Model: For more check out the Need For Speed Course 3
LINEAR SPEED
Whether it’s Christian McCaffrey in American football, Carlin Isles in rugby sevens,
or Kylian Mbappe in soccer, the moments that leave the most lasting impressions on us
are those in which players are able to speed through defenses, leaving everyone else in
their wake on the way to a scoring opportunity.

Perhaps more than any other speed category, ‘linear speed’ is what coaches are
referring to when they think about “what speed is” - and it is the type of speed that
starts all the social media wars!

Linear speed - the ability to cover a set distance in as short a time as possible - seems to be
more important than ever in team sport; players at a higher standard of competition perform
significantly more high-intensity running than those at a lower standard. In addition, high-
intensity running and sprint distances have increased by up to 35% over the last decades in a
number of team sports.

While sprinting efforts may account for as little as 2% of the total distance a player travels
in some games, these efforts often represent the pivotal moments in competition.

Total running distance during a game is irrelevant. What is far more important is
how players perform during the pivotal, high-intensity periods of the game

Game Speed Model: For more check out the Need For Speed Course 4
DECISION-MAKING SPEED
“We didn’t have much to lose. The clock was running out. I kind of saw the defensive
coverage and I figured, it’s tough for the safeties to move in those conditions. [It was
snowing]. We wanted to try to get Gronk up the seam and then the outside receiver up the
sideline. I looked at the safety and he was backing straight up, he wasn’t wide at all. I kind
of looked at him and just gave him a little pump to kind of hold him and Deion [the outside
receiver] raced by him. I threw it.” - Tom Brady

The above took former New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady less than two
seconds. It resulted in a sixty yard touchdown throw.

Legendary Dutch soccer player, Johann Cruyff, famously said: “Don’t run so much.
You have to be in the right place at the right moment, not too early, not too late”, and
similarly, hockey great Wayne Gretzky was famous for almost having a sixth sense: “I
skate to where the puck is going, not to where it has been.”

The examples above of Brady, Cruyff, and Gretzky have often been described by
opponents of traditional linear speed training as true ‘game-speed’ and describe it as an
ability that can only be trained through game practice.

What they are truly describing, however, is not ‘game-speed’, per se, but ‘decision-
making speed’ – which allows relatively slower players (such as Brady) to ‘play fast’
because of their ability to ‘think fast’.

This is where speed-ability takes a back-seat to speed-skill.

Incredible linear speed will get you in the door: being fast can be a game-changing
weapon. But if you cannot ‘think fast’ - if you cannot navigate all of the complex
information that the game throws up - then all that speed will be wasted.

Remember - skill is underpinned by ability,

but ability alone won’t lead to playing the game faster!

Game Speed Model: For more check out the Need For Speed Course 5
TEAM AND OBJECT SPEED
And finally, you will notice at the bottom of the chart - ‘Synchronized Team Speed’ and
‘Object Control Speed’ - the speed of the group (or team), and the speed of the objects
within the game (such as the ball in basketball, soccer, and American football).

The speed at which transitions happen in a game will determine the speed at which
the game is played. This is due to the fact that the speed in which these transitional
movements occur is the rate-limiting factor in how players make decisions to act.

What holds the key in these situations is the objective of the game itself. For instance, in
ball sports, it is the ball – i.e. the object – that players will react to.

Thus the coordinated movement of the entire team, as well as of the implement itself,
will be the ultimate catalyst for game speed.

The type of speed we see on the track - track-speed - and the type of speed we see in
a game - game-speed - are different. This is obvious. But it’s not only track-speed and
game-speed - this is too simplistic a categorization.

Each member of a team has an effect on the game — based not only on what they do

as individuals, but how they relate to other parts of the sport ecosystem. It is this

‘synchronicity’ that has the greatest effect on team speed – where the team’s ‘whole’ can

be more than the sum of a team’s parts.”

Game Speed Model: For more check out the Need For Speed Course 6
 WWW.ALTIS.WORLD | @ALTIS

More on the ALTIS Game-Speed Model in the

ALTIS Need for Speed Course. You can check it out in more
detail here: https://altis.world/product/altis-need-for-speed