Book Review:  Sport Specific Speed – The 3S System

by Vern Gambetta & Gary Winckler

Review by Jim Kielbaso MS, CSCS

This book is a perfect example of two guys who obviously have a lot of experience and knowledge, but don’t present it in a useful or applicable way in the book.  I have the utmost respect for these two professionals.  They have done a lot of great things, but producing this book is not one of them.

I was very excited to dig into this book when it arrived, but disappointment set in very quickly.  The main ideas of the book are the 3S System which stands for Sport Specific Speed and their PAL System of speed training which stands for Posture, Arm action & Leg action.  Initially they talked about how these systems were going to be revealed in detail, but that was not the case.  Most of the book was incredibly vague, with very little information that could actually be applied by most coaches.  There were lots of drills and exercises listed, but very few good descriptions of how or why you would use any of them.

Here is an example of the vagueness: (to put this in context, this section is talking about starts and acceleration.  This is the complete description of posture, nothing is being left out.)

“Posture – In order to sprint efficiently and to incorporate all muscle groups required in sprinting, the body must attain a proper posture and maintain it through all phases of the sprint.  The main element of this posture relates to the position of the hips tilted forward creating greater stress on the hamstrings and lower back.  In order to achieve and maintain a hip posture that is not tilted forward, the abdominal muscles must be strong enough to hold this posture.  This is referred to as core strength.”

In my opinion, that doesn’t tell you anything about proper posture.  It doesn’t describe the proper posture.  It doesn’t tell you what to look for.  It doesn’t give you any guidance as to how to coach proper posture.  All it does is say that posture is important, but there is no help.

Unfortunately, that’s kind of standard in this book.  The authors will tell you that something is very important, but there is no guidance for coaching it. 

Here is another example when referring to lateral speed and agility:

“Stopping is flexion (bending) of the ankle, knee, and hip.  This is the key concept to understanding the 3S System.  The ability to stop effectively is the key to performance as well as to injury prevention.  Lateral speed and agility requires an inter-play between starting and stopping.”

That’s it.  There is no description of the mechanics or footwork involved.  There are no coaching cues, photos, examples or anything else.  It just tells you that bending the ankle, knee and hip is the key to their system. 

I have no doubt that the authors know what to look for and can teach and correct mechanics, but they don’t describe how to do any of that in the book.  How can you tell me what the key to the entire system is (the system the book has in its title) and not explain in it detail?  It seems like they were purposefully withholding information, but I’m not sure what the purpose is. 

There were some good tests described in the evaluation section, but no normative data in which to compare your scores, so you really don’t have any idea of what good scores should be on the tests.  The purpose of the section was to evaluate speed, but if you don’t know what an appropriate score is, it doesn’t really help in the evaluation process.

The strength section was a disaster.  It looked good to begin with because they listed dozens of exercises for different goals.  Unfortunately, the whole section ended after the list.  No photos.  No descriptions.  No guidance on how to choose exercises or organize them into a program.  No sample programs.  No guidance on sets, reps, weights, volume, etc.  Nothing.  They even included a lot of Olympic lifting in their sample speed training programs later in the book, but had no descriptions whatsoever of how to do them. 

If you are a coach looking for a reference on how to implement a speed, agility or strength program, this book definitely is not for you.  In fact, I’m really not sure who the book is intended for or what the purpose is.  It is not a teaching book.  It’s not a drill book.  It’s not a programming book.  You will probably get through the entire 158 pages in a couple of hours and scratch your head thinking “what did I learn?”

These authors are very smart and very experienced.  They have trained a ton of elite level athletes and they know what they are talking about, but none of their knowledge came out in an applicable way in this book.  I’m 100% positive that these guys have more information in their brains, and I have no doubt they can train athletes.  It’s just disappointing to be told that you’re going to learn a system (i.e. the trademarked 3S System), but have most of the information withheld.

Recommendation:  Do not buy this book.