TESTIMONIALS
Jeff Adams
"I've been training and competing in wheelchair racing at the international level for over 15 years, and have had a good deal of success in middle distance on the track - 1500m and 5000m particularly. In the last few years, I seemed to have hit a plateau with my strength training. There were a bunch of factors that I suspected - I had turned 30, started doing more volume and adding mileage, added some longer distances to my schedule, and was faced with ever-increasing levels of competition.
"Anxious to break through these plateaus I hired Matt Nichol to troubleshoot my training plan.
"Matt spent an enormous amount of time with me in the planning stage - he had never trained an athlete with a disability before, and was frank and honest with me about that right up front. The first thing he told me was that he would insist on working closely with my primary coach, Peter Eriksson, to make sure that the strength program that he would design would co-ordinate with the conditioning that Peter was concentrating on. He also told me that he was going to have to go do some research, that we would both be learning as we went. He made it clear to me that he didn't have all the answers, but that by applying tried and true scientific principles, of training that he was sure that we would figure them out.
"In the first couple of weeks, Matt and I worked together quite a lot, and he made sure that I truly understood the 'How' and the 'Why' of the strength program - he was incredibly patient with me, and although he was firm and insisted on me doing things the right way, I never got a 'because I said so' answer from him. He really understood the value of helping me understand the program, and went above and beyond to make sure it got through my thick skull!
"We targeted the Rolling Rampage 10K race, which was the opener for the world series that year, and having moved up to the longer distances, I really needed to 'set the tone' for the season.
"Within three weeks, I was hitting new personal bests in the gym, and saw my new strength translating into speed when I was doing distance work or intervals in my racing chair.
"At the Rampage, I was first up all the hills, and attacked hard in the last kilometer, up a slight rise, using my new strength as a surprise weapon. I finished second, by 2/100ths of a second to Ernst VanDyk of South Africa, 5 time winner of the Boston Marathon. The rest of the season went incredibly well, and I ended up winning the Zurich Weltklasse on the Golden League Circuit, a bunch of races on the Grand Prix, and finishing with a silver in the World Cup."
I had my best season in years!
Thanks Matt!