KEEPING THE CHIP Finke’s doubters have been disappearing as well throughout his unlikely rise. “It’s really technical stuff,” Jim Finke says. “After Chris’ first day, I asked him how it went. He said, ‘Well, I found out I’ve been running wrong my entire life.’ “ With Neel’s help, Finke was able to shave a tenth of a second off his 10-yard time, a massive improvement in a sport where short-area quickness means everything. When Finke returned this summer, Neel helped chase off some more bad habits that had been giving his client issues with his hamstrings, lower back and hip flexors. He found time again this summer to wedge in another week of training at Xceleration in Austin, Texas, where he worked on his explosion and route-running with Matthew Neel. It was Neel who spotted a problem with Finke’s shin angle before their three-week session in the summer of 2018.
Austin Fit Magazine > Articles > Fitness > Clear Results, Full Data, Can’t Lose
Clear Results, Full Data, Can’t Lose
By Laci Mosier – March 1, 2017
Austin Fit Magazine > Articles > AFM > KMB: Xceleration Sports Performance Labs
KMB: Xceleration Sports Performance Labs
By Monica Brant – September 1, 20
Brian Fitzsimmons
Moving Your Center of Mass Faster: The Importance of the 0 Step
After reading these papers, my “rabbit hole” turned into researching the 0 step. It took me months to truly understand the concept. I had two flashes that helped me put the idea together. The first was in Austin, Texas, where I was hosting a Reflexive Performance Reset seminar. Peter Holmertz, President of 1080 motion, gave me a tour of the city and took me to notable, cutting edge facilities in Texas. We stopped at one of the best planned facilities I’ve seen called Xceleration Sports Performance Labs owned by Matt Neel. He commented, “It is great if we know all of this stuff. The trick is to communicate it with your athletes.” He had a special grid that communicated to his athletes their 0 step. It suddenly made sense to me. My second epiphany happened during the first night of the TrackandFootballConsortium IV. I spoke before Stuart McMillan of ALTIS and talked about the importance of the 0 step. In his great presentation, he talked about five things a coach can do better. One of his topics was the 0 step. However, he had a much better term than 0 step. He called it projection. This is a far better word to use to communicate to my athletes what we are striving for when coming out of the blocks. When explaining the 0 step, talk to your athletes about projection. With these new guiding principles, I went to work on my project to figure all of this out. I wanted to see what it would take to get my athletes to project their body further “coming out of the blocks.” Using my 1080 Sprint to collect data, I wanted to see how and why some were better than others at this. I wanted to use the MySprint app as well, but Chicago had some bad weather that made running outside difficult. (I don’t know which hinders runners more, 0-degree temps, 8” of snow, or that to save money, the village does a poor job of plowing and salting.) In conjunction with that, I stole Matt Neel’s idea of measuring the athlete’s hip distance when their foot hits the ground. Currently, I’ve measured about 25 athletes, with more to come. I picked four of them to show different aspects of what I’ve found. I am looking at N/kg, w/kg and velocity at 0.5m, and their projection distance. The first three numbers were taken from the Sprint 1080 with 1KG of resistance.
