Considered one of the pioneers in athletic development and sports performance in the United States, Bill Parisi began his journey as a javelin thrower in college and got the opportunity to train in Finland with some of the top athletes in the world. He learned a lot of training and fitness techniques while there and brought that ideology and those methods back to the United States. He used this knowledge to become a 2 time All American Athlete. He then got an opportunity to train the famous NFL quarterback Phil Simms and some other Giants players while still competing in college. After graduating he became the head strength coach for the University of Florida track team (which had 2 olympians on the team) and he helped out with the football team.
The main focus of his facilities is to increase speed, gain more strength, and become more flexible. In the facilities they use technology, called the Sparta Science Platform, that can assess the rate of force production. It is a force platform where you jump on it and it measures your rate of force development. It also measures how you produce force, the quality of the force, the ability to generate force on the way up and down, and how well you can express force through the range of motion. This technology helps them prescribe programming for the athletes. It can tell if they are weak in the anterior chain, posterior chain, or the core and where the deficiency is within their body. Typically when there is a deficiency there is an imbalance in strength and recruitment abilities in those 3 areas and that deficiency is shown to be an injury risk. They try to balance these three areas and this technology allows them to do so.
One piece of advice Bill Parisi has lived by is you can do anything anybody else can if you learn the right strategies and take consistent action. If you want to become the best in the world find out who is the best in the world and model them. You need to find a goal and let it motivate you. If you want to reach your potential as an athlete you need to take consistent action in order to get to that level. Such as eating right, working out consistently, and getting a good amount of sleep. You need to feed yourself the positive energy and learn new strategies from anywhere that you can.
Fascia is a relatively newly discovered organ in the body and Bill Parisi has recently done a lot of research and dove into this topic a lot. He actually recently became a member on the board of directors of the Fascia Research Society. Fascia is the internal connective tissue of the body. It is a sensory organ and it’s a system that is adaptable, trainable, and responds to stress. In order to improve performance you need to develop the fascia system. When you move around it is to manage fascia development. If a young person falls down the odds are that they aren’t going to get hurt compared to an older person falling because the younger person’s fascia web is more pliable and more resilient. Old age and a lack of hydration causes the fascia to lock up which is avoidable.
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