First of all, I feel a bit embarrassed in case someone thinks "oh no, this guy will yet another time open his mouth and talk about speed, blah blah". Because (purely coincidentally) speed _is_ a topic of quite some interest for me. But well, this thread is literally on SPEED (capital letters - I'm citing them, haha) so I'll reply.
I have been practicing speed for quite a while and basically have reduced that just a few months ago. My strategy was to get into speed as quickly as I could, thus neglecting other stuff which would have to be worked on at a later time (groove, interdependence, basically many really important/musical things). And it worked out! So speed isn't the problem now and I've shifted my focus on motions, control, improving muscle memory etc. I do speed up at times while practicing but I'm doing most stuff at slower/medium tempo, work on evenness, (hand) feel and control.
On the Derek Roddy forum some people have a practice log. I've started a thread on what I've been practicing and have kept it up so far:
http://www.derekroddy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=20250
Sometimes it morphs into a blog - sorry for that - but I just thought it would make sense to write down everything music related so whoever reads that stuff will have a better idea what happens in my "musical life".
Some 'influences' on why I hit those speeds are:
- I approached learning drumming fron an "imagine you're an extreme drummer or want to learn this as quickly as possible" perspective. (That also applies to why I started to use a double pedal right from the beginning. I'm still not the most ardent lover of extreme music but I do have a decent respect for the skills involved.)
- I bought decent tutorials to
a) learn techniques, and learn them correctly (JoJo's DVD on hands, Todd Sucherman's DVDs - his 1st DVD has a great section on rudiments/handwork, and a few more - e.g. Tim Waterson -> pure shock in the footwork department, Thomas Lang -> coordination craze, Derek Roddy & George Kollias -> metal power, speed).
And
b) Apart from the technical stuff they are also _motivating_ so I'm returning to them every now and then, to readjust grip/technique and to get some extra motivation.
I don't think I have extra talent or whatever. I approached drumming from a physical perspective, as said above (and 'physical' includes applying stuff I learned from doing athletics in my youth and having been a guitarist for almost 22 years). So I plunged into it, I was never a fan of "start slow and raise bpm by 1 (or 5) every week/month"... The slow way does have a benefit of course but I tried to progress as quickly as I could. One side effect of that is having to return to the "learn technique properly" stage and relearn to actually _feel/control_ what I'm playing, not only to rely on muscle memory and pad bounce. So that's why I've been relearning some rudiments because the speeds I was hitting at first was a bit of cheating. Starting slow helps building control - and as we all know, control is paramount. But you can work on control by plunging into the fast stuff and try to "clean it up later".
PS: Another side effect of my approach is that the speed progress will slow down quickly and come to a halt altogether. I've got used to that and don't expect any extraordinary further speed progress. But I have more than enough work to bring up lots of rudiments (e.g. the other paradiddle variations, not only the standard pattern) up to speed to get 'balanced'. So if you take/need more time to get at a certain speed actually you'll have a longer period of time having fun achieving those speeds. Makes sense? At first it was a bit discouraging as I basically stopped to progress in terms of bpm but now as I've been focusing on control this discouraging element has completely disappeared. I'm kind of "rebooting" right now, haha.