In the split seconds before any physical action, the outcome is already being determined. Athletes take in information from their visual, auditory, kinesthetic and tactile senses. The brain simultaneously processes and prioritizes this information in context with their knowledge, experience and strategy to make performance-critical decisions. This decision and response is then organized and sent to the musculoskeletal system. For high performance, sense and process must happen quickly, accurately and before the body even starts to move.
True athletic movement can only be expressed when an athlete has a strong and stable base. Assessing and optimizing foundational human movement is the cornerstone of our approach to performance development. Elite athletes can perform at a high level with limitations, but will never reach their full potential and are at a greater risk of injury. By assessing their quality of movement we can accurately apply the correct intervention to restore optimal movement and remove potential limitations.
Optimizing the movement abilities of athletes allows them to play their chosen sport at a higher level, game in and game out, season after season.
The continual, dynamic process of assessing and analyzing athletes at a granular level tells us definitively what they are ready for on any given day and informs and guides daily improvement programs. We dissect the sleep of athletes; how, what and when they eat; we dive into their physiological and psychological readiness to determine how it all impacts performance.
It isn’t about doing what some theoretical model tells us we should do; it’s about listening to what the athlete’s body is telling us it is capable of that day.
Training looks different at SPARQ, because SPARQ looks at training in a completely different way. Building better athletes requires more than a one-size-fits-all training program. When we know and understand everything we can about an athlete, we can prescribe a complete and dynamic improvement model designed to optimize the performance of that athlete.
Showtime. This is where you flat out get it done, the physical output that results from working the Nike SPARQ Performance Methodology. What you do is up to you – posting a PR in a weekend sprint tri, notching three sacks on a rival QB, flying through a 90-minute soccer match, cutting five strokes from your handicap. It is any physical expression of your athletic performance that reflects the results of your hard work and what you need to get after to become a better athlete.