dhp's Speed and Agility Programs

“The two most important skills of any sport are speed and agility”

The ability to generate explosive speed, change directions quickly, and move without falter in 360˚ is what makes for a great athlete. For some, these talents are hereditary, for others, it requires hard work and many times in the quest to achieve these skills, injury can shut the whole process down.

dhp's revolutionary system for developing ultimate speed, agility and vertical leap. In our sports performance lab we feature highly sophisticated equipment that allows us to first, identify biomechanical faults, begin a correction process, and then literally re-educate the central nervous system. This neural education provided through our unique unweighting and high speed training system affords us an opportunity to release the disruptive inhibition that generally prevents the musculoskeletal system from performing maximal agility and speed. This process cannot be duplicated without these tools.

While harnessed in the unweighting canopy there is a major reduction of the potential of shear force at the joints and minimal muscular overload. Our strength training is conducted with the innovative vibration platform. This type of training magnifies the muscular recruitment patterns, enhances hormonal responses, accelerates recovery, and reduces body fat while increasing muscle mass.
dhp provides one of the most effective speed & agility training programs available anywhere.

In just 8 sessions we can draw speed from raw talent. If you've been frustrated with your inability to make the cut, drop that all important few seconds, if your slow out of the blocks, have trouble changing directions, you owe it to yourself to see us. book an appointment? (write us)

Gait Analysis and Gait Correction “Gait”, in laymen’s term represents the way in which we walk, or in the case of sport, run. Gait analysis is simply that, a review in the way we move. This can be achieved under the trained eye, or better, by video capture. With the latter, the benefits being the opportunity to slow down the action to gain a closer look at things.

So you say… how can this help my running or alleviate nagging injuries? All of us on this planet are subject to environmental consequences that can shape the way we walk, live and breathe. Gravity alone is constantly pressing us against the earth. This subtle pressure has the potential to degrade our posture and in so doing, effect the bio-mechanics of our framework composed of muscle, connective tissue and bone. Without taking into account other issues such as past injuries or repetitive traumas, we may have experienced that also work to degrade proper mechanics. Suffice to say, muscular imbalance is not an uncommon occurrence. These imbalances generally don’t manifest into injuries quickly unless we subject our bodies to rigorous repetitive movements, such as high mileage running, cycling or a host of other activities that we train to perfect.

What are common faults found in gait analysis? It can be excessive external or internal rotation of the legs due to muscular imbalances of the thigh and instability of the hip, varus or valgus (knock knee or bow legged) patterns of the knee, pronation or supination of the foot.

Compounded by high repetition these faulty mechanics can result in poor performance or eventual injury. Gait analysis can serve as the first step in intervention to correct these bio-mechanical faults. Sometimes, just the awareness of the mechanical indiscretion is enough feedback to aide in the correction. Wouldn’t this all be so simple if that is all that was needed?

In our Sports Performance Lab we perform video gait analysis as the first phase of our performance enhancement program. If we find issues in gait we immediately began the gait correction process. Through a unique strapping and harnessing of the lower limbs into the correct paths allows the subject to walk in this unweighted corrected state.

This introduction to corrected motor patterns is readily received by the brain and within a few training sessions these new skills are learned and the faults forgotten. Of course, proper training under corrected gait improves the rate of success but the end result is renewed opportunity for performance. When the body is properly aligned as it engages the ground you will achieve maximal force production and more efficient leg turnover.

Identify with the fact that there is clearly a right and a wrong way to run. Aside from skill and training there resides a history of underlying tendencies to do things incorrectly and these faults can be improved upon and to my knowledge, unweighted running along with proper gait correction is a viable solution and should be given consideration. If there seems to be a leak in your power output, you have reached a plateau in your speed and endurance or you’re plagued with injuries, have your gait evaluated. It may be just the advice you needed.

Speed and Agility are the hallmarks of every great athlete. Every athlete aspires to achieve great speed and agility and there are many systems of training in the world that attempt to enhance these physical traits. Most of these training systems are antiquated. The cream always rises to the top in sport and the rest... well, the rest sit out while history and records are made and broken.

dhp is not so different in our aspirations to assist athletes in their quest for speed and agility. But what does set us apart form most training systems is the hierarchy in which we approach the trainees functionality. In the majority of training systems for sport where speed and agility are concerned, the approach is one of measured intensity and volume of work which is focused on the playing field, track or court. Running drills and repeats, forward, back, laterally and in some cases with external loads to try and trick the muscles into more rapid firing sequence and directional stability.

The way I like to explain what we do is with this analogy; "In business, be it calling on a client or generally trying to get something accomplished, we always have greater result if we can circumvent the receptionist and get to the decision makers". In our approach to training the muscle represents the receptionist and the central nervous system represent the decision maker. Our functional capacity to achieve any movement is dependant upon the CNS direction to do so or likewise, is inhibited to accomplish tasks that represent too great a risk to our survival.

We begin our training with a specially designed treadmill and pneumatic canopy that affords us the opportunity to "unweight" the trainee, generally by as much as 30% of their bodyweight. What this does is reduce the central nervous systems inhibition. Or put another way, taking the fear out of the muscle. In this uninhibited state we are able to introduce new information to the CNS devoid of the commonly imposed inhibition. Think of this as hitting the reset button and reprogramming the muscles and movement.

Our specially designed treadmill can produce speeds as high as 28 mph with elevations of up to 28%. Of course, no human to date can achieve these speeds, but in a harness in an unweighted state we are able to introduce speeds briefly that tune the CNS which in turn improves the firing frequency of the working muscles. What we achieve with our athletes in nothing short of amazing!

In the case of running vs. other modes of movement e.g. cycling swimming etc. one would assume that to achieve speed, it’s only a matter of turning the legs over faster than in the past. Another view might be to take larger strides without sacrificing our current leg speed. Both assumptions would be correct, the question is what is the mechanism to achieve this greater rate of leg turnover or increased stride length?

I have often posed the question to many of my clients; what’s the first thing that happens when you have achieved your peak speed. My answer is… you begin to slow down. The reason I ask this question is to shed light on a common fault in speed work, trying to hold speed for too long when “speed” is the desired outcome.

To clarify my point, achieving speed beyond what we are currently capable of producing requires external influence. In track and field it is common practice to run against resistance such as with a bungee cord or while towing a parachute, in both cases the resistance is abruptly released in order for the muscular contractions required to work or tow the resistance is still in place in absence of the load which creates a temporary state of “over speed”. This is basically a trick played on the central nervous system which is now recruiting muscular involvement that was thought to be needed but suddenly did not.

Another less fancy method of over speed development is simply downhill running. In this instance the forces of gravity are providing the external force which commands higher leg turnover and in some individuals, greater stride or both. Personally I am not a fan of down hill running for the sake of speed development in that the risk far out weights the potential benefits.

Be that as it may what needs to be realized is that the work of speed production is much more a neural education than that of a muscular overload. The brain controls the equipment that musters the rate and force of contractions to produce this elusive end product. Unlike muscular development the central nervous system is a quick study, it learns lessons very efficiently however the common problem in this learning curve is the confusion we create in our lesson plans. When teaching speed, don’t confuse the signals or lesson plan with fatigue tolerance. Trying to maintain pace beyond peak performance where speed is concerned changes the stimulus and eventually even the muscle fibers recruited.

It takes on average, 6 seconds before peak speed begins to degrade after which, the body requires downtime before attempting to achieve peak speed once again. So, the broad stroke lesson plan should be to create speed, recover well and replicate the effort. This is a very straight forward message to the central nervous system that speed is your intent and that you respect the associated requirement to allow adequate recovery before attempting another dose.

In our lab we teach speed on our high speed treadmill while harnessed and partially unweighted. We will instruct a client to jump onto a moving belt at progressive levels of speed which forces a heightened neural acuity and balance. Once they have mastered the pace provided they are instructed to jump out, recover and await the next level of progression. It is not uncommon to see speeds in excess of 19-20 mph at the peak of these sessions. It is also not uncommon to see several miles per hour improvements in just a matter of a few sessions. Sounds hard to believe? Not when the appropriate influences are presented and respect offered to the requirement of adequate recovery.

In our controlled environment we are fortunate in that we can introduce these high speeds in a very safe manor, free of shear forces and muscular overload. Out in the world, such as in down hill running caution must be considered due to the high level of stress that comes from these external forces and this type of training should come only after a high degree of fitness and skill are achieved.