Deceleration Training: The Beginnings- The Devun Walsh Story

How losing your teeth and laying unconscious at the bottom of a 60ft cliff revolutionized the fitness industry when it comes to rotational power training!

Deceleration Training: I have been using and developing a concept called deceleration training for the past 10 years.

What I have found is that by training the body to rapidly decelerate, you inherently increase the bodies ability to accelerate.

I stumbled upon this concept by accident. I was working with one of my snowboard athletes; Devun Walsh. Devun is as one of the greatest backcountry snowboarders in the history of the sport.

Even when you are at the top of your game accidents happen. Devun was in the Whistler backcountry jumping off 60ft cliffs when he landed in a hole and had his knees compressed into his face.

He was unconscious and lost his front teeth.

This could have been a career ending accident but ended up creating a path of training that would forever change the way I trained my athletes.

After the accident I decided to change the focus of Devun’s training from explosive rotational training to deceleration training.

I started to design exercises that would require Devun to use his legs as a braking system instead of a power generator.

Depth jumps, anti-rotation drills, rapid eccentric loading and joint integrity work became the bulk of his sessions.

What we didn’t expect was that this new style of training actually had some unexpected benefits.

Devun is an avid golfer and like every golfer Devun wanted more distance.

Seeing that it was the snowboard off season Devun started playing more golf. His distance was increasing at an alarming rate.

The training we were doing in the gym for his snowboarding was increasing his ability to rotate and explode in his golf swing!

Devun and I shared these techniques on the Golf Channel’s Titleist Golf Fitness Academy show with Dr.Greg Rose and Dave Phillips a few seasons ago.

Since this discovery of this type of training I have been applying these strategies to my golf population, baseball, tennis, football, hockey and any other rotational athlete.

What we have seen is an amazing increase in rotational power, decreased injury and overall improved performance.

In this weeks Coach Glass Podcast Devun shares his story and how he was able to get back on his snowboard to jump another day.

Hope you enjoy!

#CoachGlass

http://player.vimeo.com/video/54688049