About

Since 1970, Somax Performance Institute has specialized in improving efficiency in athletes–rather than focusing on strength and endurance.

The reason for this is that muscles are only 20% efficient; the other 80% is dissipated at heat.

By contrast, a 1% improvement in efficiency will improve performance 1%.

This is why Somax athletes make more progress in a few weeks than conventional programs taking several years.

For instance, Somax has trained just 17 Olympic swimmers–but these swimmers have won a total of 43 Gold Medals and have set 11 World Records.

Somax has trained hundreds of young competitive swimmers who have cut their times 3-18% while cutting their stroke count up to 50%.  All of our training is based on frame-by-frame underwater stroke analysis and none on grinding out mega-yardage or lifting weights.

In fact, we discourage weight-lifting in athletes because it creates microfibers (scar tissue) that restrict flexibility and eventually performance.

Most of our work with elite and amateur athletes is undoing the damage caused by lifting weights and endurance training.

Our professional golfers have won the US Open as a rookie, improved their putting from #113 to #1 on tour, quadrupled their tour income, and increased their longest drive from 295 to 400.  Our amateur golfers have eliminated back, neck, hip and shoulder pain while cutting 5-11 strokes off their game.

Baseball players have increased their long ball from 400 to 480 feet, increased their bases stolen from 14/15 to 32/33 and increased their top pitching velocity from 88 to 92 miles an hour.

All these improvements took four weeks or less–not months and years.

Our approach to improving performance is that sport is movement, and to move you need flexibility.  Our 40 years of working with the best athletes in the world, in all sports, has shown us that the greatest difference between the best and those below them is in their flexibility.  They are the best because they do not have to overcome the internal resistance of their body in order to compete and win.

Once you have the flexibility required for your sport, then you need to learn to move efficiently.  Efficient movement is often very different from conventional or ‘natural’ movement. The world’s best athletes are the best because many of their movements are counter-intuitive.

Whether it is in an individual program, a camp or clinic, all of our training programs begin with measuring the five efficiency components in every sport: Range, Sequence, Speed, Separation and Alignment.  We measure these components from frame-by-frame video of each athlete.  We then perform the same measurements on video of historically great athletes so that each of our clients can see how they differ mathematically from the best.  In this way, all of our analyses are objective and form the basis of all our programs.

Next we measure the static ranges of our clients, as well as their strength in certain critical ranges.  We also measure other physiological and neurological components that contribute to performance.

Only after our clients have a complete picture of their present situation do we begin a program to improve their components. The result is an immediate and dramatic improvement in their performance. It is common, for instance, when we take our golfers to the driving range to try out their new swing, that they remark ‘I have never hit the ball that well in my life before’.

We take the same care with all of our athletes, whether they are a professional making tens of millions of dollars every year, or a young swimmer with dreams of going to the Olympics, or a young soccer or baseball player with dreams of making it to the big leagues.

If you would like to get off the treadmill of constantly lifting weights, running to improve performance, or practicing to improve your skills; if you would like to take years off your age; or if you would like to learn how to teach your kids to play or swim like the world’s best, please look at the programs we offer at www.somaxsports.com.

You are always welcome to call us at 1-800-227-6629.  We are happy to send you demo DVD’s, research articles and client testimonials.