Dalcourt

Michol Dalcourt: Inventor of the ViPR, author and educator talks to Caroline Sandry and tells us how he came to be one of the leaders in the fitness and sports industry

Michol

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or somebody so highly regarded in the sports world, it is hard to believe that Dalcourt was the guy that was picked last for school games and describes himself a bit of a geek! In fact his passion for fitness grew not from his athletic prowess, but from his constantly questioning mind and his desire to learn about the body, the mechanics of the body and how it all worked together..

CS: Is this what led you to develop the ViPR? MD: Yes - I became excited about finding a way to make a biceps exercise into a whole body exercise by lunging, twisting and biceps curling simultaneously. I wanted to create a tool heavy enough to load the whole body in order to develop strength and power, and I wanted it to be in a material that could be thrown such as rubber and so the ViPR was born! CS: How did you bring your invention into the sports world? MD: I first introduced the ViPR to a team of professional hockey players (the equivalent of our Premiership footballers here) during their off-season and saw great results. When the players talked about investing in it, I asked them, Why? and they said that when they trained with the ViPR, the game slowed down for them! They were so much quicker and so much more stable that they avoided critical delays (when a player loses balance, then loses guard and loses touch with the game for a second) and so it seemed that the game slowed down because they had more time to make decisions during the game. I like to translate this into real life: a 75 year old can slow down the game of life if he trips he has more time to think and react. CS: The ViPR is now in most gyms and is widely used amongst personal trainers. Why do you think it became so popular? MD: We quickly realised that this had a real place in general life. ViPR was actually moving along with science: Learning about how the foot affects the hip for example, or pre-stressing a muscle or chain reactions: these things all point towards an integrated approach to training. The ViPR came along at the right time.

CS: Michol, you are known as the go-to man for functional training! Tell us how your journey brought you to where you are today MD: 13 years ago, I left university with the perception that the body was made up of 600 or so muscles that all needed to go through a period of training, rest, adaptation and so forth and with that perception, I entered the fitness arena. My work in a sports performance training centre meant that I was mostly dealing with athletes, the majority of which played hockey. During the off-season, we had 14 weeks to get the players stronger, faster, bigger and fitter ready for the season and all of our training was based upon this idea of the body being 600 muscles which needed working. So we had split programmes for chest and shoulders one day, legs another day and so on. The players always knew what was coming up in their training. However, in spite of all this training, the men were never the fittest or strongest and I wanted to know why! When looking into how the fittest guy

trained (he was a farm kid from the country) I saw that he had no system, no science or gym routines, but he used his whole body in a functional way shovelling, lifting and throwing hay bales, hammering and so on and I realised that we are stronger as a whole, than as a sum of our parts.

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CS: How would you apply this integrated approach into a sport? MD: First I would break down the game into movement planes: Lets take for example a game of tennis. Tennis is highly reactive and multi-planar. The serve is all about pushing the ball and trying to generate power and the player will lean back to pre-stretch the muscles along the front of the body and then explode forward to hit the ball. This prestretch loads up the muscles increasing power for the serve. There are three points that I would look at, that you can apply to any sport: , Where do you need strength? For tennis you need ab strength, as well as hip flexors, quads and chest strength. Also, are the muscles flexible enough to allow good movement? , Can you use integrated training? Can you find an exercise that will target shoulder girdle, trunk, core and feet? , Can you have strength in movement? Bench pressing may grow a strong, defined chest but it could over-tighten the muscles and it will also not teach your feet how to be strong or fast! CS: Do you have any advice for sportsmen and sportswomen? MD: I highly recommend that you take 10 minutes of your session to do integrated exercises. CS: How do you stay fit? MD: I live in Southern California now so I have taken up surfing. I walk to the ocean and that connects me to nature and I de-stress.

Then I jump in the ocean and that connects me with the rhythm of the ocean and then my day is so much better! (UF is very jealous!). I also love to mountain bike and I take my ViPR (and dog!) to the park and play around! Nature is important 150 years ago we were jumping creeks and running around trees, but now we are becoming machines: we train like machines, we develop machines to make life easier and then we pay to go and train on machines like machines! With ViPR, I leave the session exhausted but invigorated and that is so much better. UF Find out more about Michol Dalcourt and update your knowledge by checking out PT on the net www.ptonthenet.com www.viprfit.com ViPR was created from a need to evolve training tools, foster purposeful motion and blend strength training with functional training and movement. Movement is fundamental. And what makes up effective movement is a blend of lifting, shifting and twisting. Michol Dalcourt, creator of ViPR

i wanted to create a tool heavy enough to load the whole body in order to develop strength and power...

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