I believe it was 11 when recorded at the fancy lab, but 12 extrapolated from the youtube clip? PS: also physicist and always struggling with converting units! \m/
This makes more sense then, thanks 
Yes I’m hearing midi notes and what’s confusing is you can hear the percussive attack of the nylon strings Blended in there. But I can’t tell if that’s going as fast as the midi notes. Or sped up notes.
Disclaimer: non-physicist!
In the anatomical literature, they refer to one hertz as a complete cycle of the movement. e.g. Extend your elbow, then flex it back to the starting position — that’s one hertz. If you’re a hummingbird, flap down, flap back up to the starting position. And so on.
Of course in picking terms, each directional half of the movement plays a note, so you get two notes for every cycle.
In the lab tests, they chose a take where John happened to play around 11hz - 12hz. And I believe they averaged over several seconds somewhere in the middle of that take, as his movement is slightly different both before he gets going, and after he begins to tire. You can see a bit of that footage at the end of the trailer we put up:
In the clip I posted upstream, I just picked a one-second interval somewhere in the middle of one take of a batch of practice footage. I would guess John’s actual speed probably fluctuates somewhat throughout that take, and across different takes.
The greater picture we’re seeing here, particularly when compared anecdotally to the drum contests, is that the 300bpm ballpark — give or take a couple notes per second — is probably close to the limit of human performance for deliberately actuated muscle movement.
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Sorry! I was only trying to understand the conventions in terms of what I already know, not appeal to authority (of which I have none) or anything like that. This clears it up, thanks.
One of the oldest tricks in the book my friend. There is a midi backing track that covers up his missed notes and timings.
They dubbed your arms onto the faker’s? 
He played it live and at 0:24 of the video he stop and ask to adjust the balance of the sound and we hear him play the E string only???
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I love how he’s pickin’ and a grinnin’ at 220bpm.
It’s hard to tell but, for a live performance, the recording is very clean. I don’t think anyone could play 16ths at 280bpm for that length of time on a guitar and be that clean.
I’m sure that even a jazz drummer playing a tune at 250+bpm wouldn’t be able to keep that tempo, especially live.
In the live performance at the highest tempos he’s simply skipping notes and playing only the most important notes, giving a general feel of the melody. The orchestra accompaniment masks it.